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An Exocomet, or Extrasolar Comet, Is A Comet Outside The Solar System, Which Includes Rogue Comets and Comets That Orbit The Stars Other Than The Sun

An exocomet is a comet outside our solar system, including rogue comets and comets orbiting other stars. Single-apparition comets are not bound to the sun and can travel outside the solar system. Sungrazing comets often suffer damage from their close approach to the sun, with some burning up entirely. Many sungrazing comets follow the Kreutz path and are part of the Kreutz Group, which is thought to have originated from a single comet that broke up long ago.

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46 views7 pages

An Exocomet, or Extrasolar Comet, Is A Comet Outside The Solar System, Which Includes Rogue Comets and Comets That Orbit The Stars Other Than The Sun

An exocomet is a comet outside our solar system, including rogue comets and comets orbiting other stars. Single-apparition comets are not bound to the sun and can travel outside the solar system. Sungrazing comets often suffer damage from their close approach to the sun, with some burning up entirely. Many sungrazing comets follow the Kreutz path and are part of the Kreutz Group, which is thought to have originated from a single comet that broke up long ago.

Uploaded by

Angel Niña Vertudazo
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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An exocomet, or

extrasolar comet, is a comet


outside the Solar System,
which includes rogue comets
and comets that orbit the
stars other than the sun.

.
Single-apparition comets are
thought to be comets that are not
bound to the sun and can travel out
of the solor system.

Sungrazing comets are often ill-


fated comets that suffer from an
Icarus problem. They are classified as
comets that travel within 850,000
miles of the sun, and some of these
comets burn up entirely. The Kreutz
Group is a subgroup of sungrazers.
According to NASA, “Many
sungrazing comets follow as a similar
orbit, called the Kreutz Path, and
collectively belong to a population
called the Kreutz Group. “NASA
suspects that the comets currently on
the Kreutz Path originated from a
single comet that broke up long ago.
A comet is usually
characterized by its tail. A
dead comet has lost all its
ices and gases (responsible
for producing this tail),
leaving just a rocky core.
Comets are fascinating celestial objects that
have frightened ad delighted stargazers
throughout history.
The classification of comets is an ongoing
process. Comets can be distinguished by their
orbits, which vary wildly. A comet can be either
a long-period comet or a short-period comet,
depending on whether its orbit is shorter than
200 years. Long-period comets are on paths
that take them out past the solar system’s
planets before they return.
Danish astronomer Jan Oort proposed that
comets reside in a huge cloud at the outer
reaches of the solar system, far beyond the
orbit of Pluto. This has come to be known as the
Oort Cloud. Statistics imply that it may contain
as many as a trillion comets and may account
for a significant fraction of the mass of the solar
system. However, since the individual comets
are so small and so far away, we have no direct
evidence about the actual existence of the Oort
Cloud.
The Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past
the orbit of Neptune roughly 30 to 100 AU from
the Sun. The Belt contains many icy bodies
which can become comets. Occasionally the
orbit of a Kuiper Belt object will be disturbed
by gravitational interactions with the giant
planets in such a way as to cause thr object to
take up an orbit that crosses into the inner solar
system.
Although the Oort Cloud is much farther
away from the Sun than the Kuiper Belt, it
appears that the Oort Cloud objects were
formed closer to the Sun that the Kuiper Belt
objects. Small objects formed near the giant
planets would have been ejected from the solar
system by gravitational encounters. Those that
didn’t escape entirely formed the distant Oort
Cloud. Small objects that formed farther out
had no such interactions, and remained as the
Kuiper Belt objects.
Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen
gases, rock and dust that orbit the Sun.
When frozen, the are the size of a town.
When a comet’s orbit brings it close to the
Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases
into a giant glowing head larger than most
planets. The dust and gases form a tail that
stretches away from the Sun for millions of
miles. There are likely billions of comets
orbiting our Sun in Kuiper Belt and even
more distant Oort Cloud.

The current number of known comets is


3,586

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