The world around us. What is a comet?

Far, boundless, deep blue and unattainablethe sky, it always beckoned to people. No wonder the man tried to fly to the clouds, like a bird. No wonder it was here that he settled his gods and guardian angels.

But the sky was not always favorable to the earthlyresidents. Quite often it happened that trials fell on people, as if from a cornucopia. And then they were trying to find explanations or at least a precursor. To them carried sudden hurricanes and storms, eclipses of the sun and the moon, bizarre drawings on the clouds. One of the messengers of misfortunes was considered a comet. For quite a long time, people believed that when a comet flies to the ground, it's not good.

So what is a comet really? The very name of this phenomenon comes from the Greek word, which means "tail" or "shaggy, tailed". Today, a comet is called the celestial body, followed by a trail of brilliant particles. With the naked eye, you can see it quite rarely: once every ten to fifteen years. For example, in 1997, Comet Hale Bopp flew to Earth, a bright radiance from which every inhabitant of the planet could see.

The horsetail slowly swims along the starrythe sky. When people did not know exactly what a comet was, they tried to solve her riddle, explain to herself its meaning. But it was unambiguously afraid of it then, and now - in the twenty-first century. In 1527, the space visitor brought such horror to the earthmen that many fell ill or died only from fear! But already

the end of the sixteenth century, astronomers have found out,that comets have their own orbits, obey all the laws of physics. Isaac Newton in 1610 calculated the path of one such body and found out that it has the shape of an infinitely elongated curve. Edmond Halley investigated the comets flying to the Earth regularly and came to the conclusion that we were visited by not numerous luminaries, but only a few of them several times. Their orbits with a certain frequency are suppressed with the route of our planet. In support of his theory, he predicted the next appearance of a comet, named after his name - Halley, for 1758. The last time she was seen in 1986.

When a person has learned to use a telescope, thatsuch a comet - everyone learned. And over time, we received high-quality images from the depths of space. Today, scientists know about 1200 comets. Twenty-five percent of them return to the Sun several times.

Comet consists of

ringed parts. This is, first of all, a head that has a core and a shell, and a tail that extends a great distance. Bright stars are shining through it. The head is formed by solid particles (frozen gases and ice). The size of such a body can be several kilometers, and the length of its tail - to millions of kilometers. When the star approaches the Sun, the ice begins to melt and evaporate. Several such circles, stretched for millions of light years, and the comet completely disintegrated in space.

Now you know what a comet really is, and you can not be afraid of its appearance in the night sky. And even on the contrary, look forward to her arrival and enjoy the charming appearance.