Astronomy 2232F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Solar Wind, Solar Thermal Collector, Hubble Space Telescope

• School: Western University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: Astronomy 2232F/G
• Professor: stanimirmetchev

Document Summary

Anatomy of a comet: coma: atmosphere that comes from heated nucleus plasma tail: gas escaping from coma, pushed by solar wind: always oriented away from the sun dust tail: pushed by solar photons (solar radiation pressure, drags behind as the comet goes around due to it being heavier some may fall into the sun = sun grazing comets disintegrate and then fall into the sun tail changes direction so that it is pointing away from the sun (disk in the picture = due to sun being so bright, must be covered for the images to be taken) Rosetta carried the philae lander: having two lobes may have caused the lander to bounce and fall into the surface, causing the death of the lander scientists looked at the surface and saw that it was composed of different layers on each lobe, each lobe was once an independent object low velocity collision of two comets allowed this larger comet to develop.