Table of Contents
How large is a comet?
Comets are very small in size relative to planets. Their average diameters usually range from 750 meters (2,460 feet) or less to about 20 kilometers (12 miles).
How much does Halley’s comet weigh in tons?
Answer 1: Halley’s comet is comparatively small as it has a nucleus of 15 kilometres long, 8 kilometres wide and around 8 kilometres thick. Further, the mass of the comet is around 242.5 billion tons. Moreover, the average density of it is 0.6 g/cm3.
What is the average density of a comet?
Known comets have been estimated to have an average density of 0.6 g/cm3 (0.35 oz/cu in). Because of their low mass, comet nuclei do not become spherical under their own gravity and therefore have irregular shapes.
How strong is comet?
Because of the comet’s high orbital eccentricity, 0.9951, and inclination, 89.43°, the impact velocity would be 52.9 km (32.9 miles) per second. The resulting impact energy is equivalent to 4.4 billion megatons of TNT.
How big was the comet that killed the dinosaurs?
Folks in the asteroid camp think the impactor was about 6.2 miles (10 km) in diameter. Asteroid or comet fragment, the space rock was big enough to spur one of Earth’s six known mass extinctions.
Do comets have gravity?
The reason behind this is simple: Comets aren’t terribly big—67P is roughly four kilometers across and has a mass considerably less than a typical Rocky Mountain. This makes the force of gravity on the comet pretty weak, barely enough to hold it together.
What part of the comet has the most mass?
The nucleus
The nucleus, following this combination of materials, carries the most mass of the comet. The nucleus of a comet is also regarded as one of the darkest objects ever witnessed in the space.
What is the largest size of a comet?
The latest estimates put the comet’s nucleus at about 93 miles (150 kilometers) wide. That’s by far the biggest size estimate for a comet in decades. By contrast, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft orbited from 2014 to 2016, was only about 2.5 miles wide.
What is the largest comet discovered?
The Ulysses spacecraft unexpectedly crossed the comet’s tail at a distance of more than 500 million km (3.3 AU; 310 million mi) from the nucleus, showing that Hyakutake had the longest tail known for a comet. Hyakutake is a long-period comet….Comet Hyakutake.
| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 4.2 km (2.6 mi) |
| Sidereal rotation period | 6 hours |
Can comets hit the earth?
NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.
Why are comets icy bodies?
Comets are icy bodies of frozen gases, rocks and dust left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. As a comet approaches the sun, it heats up very quickly causing solid ice to turn directly into gas via a process called sublimation, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute.