01:750:109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud, Solar Wind
30 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
Formed beyond the frost line, comets are icy counterparts to asteroids. Nucleus of comet is a dirty snowball . Most comets remain perpetually frozen in the outer solar system. Only comets that enter the inner solar system grow tails. A coma is the atmosphere that comes from a comet"s heated nucleus. A plasma tail is ion gas escaping from coma, pushed by the solar wind. A dust tail is made of particles. Kepler"s second law: speed of an object orbiting around the sun is inversely proportional to the distance from the sun (fast when close, slow when far) If the comet comes close to a giant planet, the planet"s gravity can deflect the comet into a smaller orbit. Only a tiny number of comets enter the inner solar system. Oort cloud: on random orbits extending to about 50,000 au. Some comets come from above (not on the plane of the ecliptic.
