10 Facts about Asteroids and Comets

Thursday, April 9th 2015. | Astronomy


Facts about Asteroids and Comets tell you about the objects in space. Sometimes asteroid is just like a planet. Some of them have moons. There are around 150 asteroids in the universe which have a moon. In 1993, the first discovery of asteroid moon system can be seen in asteroid Ida and Moon Dactyl. If you want to know more facts about comets and asteroid, check the following post below:

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 1: the ring

If we talk about the planet which has a ring, you can see Saturn. It has the glorious and beautiful ring. Actually some asteroids have ring system too. One of them is Chariklo.  It has narrow rings.

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 2: the spacecraft

It seems that researchers and scientists in the world are not only interested to know about other planets, but also the asteroids. There are around 10 spacecrafts in the world which land on asteroids.

Facts about Asteroids and Comets

Facts about Asteroids and Comets

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 3: the first asteroid discovered

Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid in 1801. It is named Ceres. Now it is included as a dwarf planet. Get facts about asteroids here.

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 4: comet

Comet is always compared to asteroid. Both are different because comet has tail which always points away from the sun. It is due to the solar wind.

Comet

Comet

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 5: the coma

The coma is developed when the comet is located near the sun. The diameter of a comet can be a hundred or thousand miles.

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 6: the building block of life

Comets have the building blocks of life which contain organic compounds and water.

Asteroids in Space

Asteroids in Space

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 7: the discovery

There are around 4,000 comets which have been discovered by scientists by 2010. But it is believed that there are hundreds of millions comets out there.

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 8: nuclei

The nuclei of a comet consist of small rocky particles, dust and ice. The nuclei can stretch from 100 m to 10 km.

Comet Facts

Comet Facts

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 9: the tail of comet

Sometimes we do not have to use any telescope to see the tail or coma of a comet. We can see it right away on earth if the tail is large enough.

Facts about Asteroids and Comets 10: the great comet’s appearance in the late 20th century

In 1996, people saw the appearance of Comet Hyakutake. Then in 1997, people saw Hale–Bopp. In January 2007, people could see the C/2006 P1 (McNaught) without using telescope.

Asteroids Facts

Asteroids Facts

Are you impressed reading facts about asteroids and comets?


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