What are comets?

A comet is like a dirty snowball that travels through space and sometimes visits our neighborhood.

Comets are made of ice, dust, and rocks, kind of like what you might find in the freezer at home, but much bigger and colder! When they get close to the Sun, the heat makes some of their ice melt, creating a glowing cloud around them called a tail, which is why we can see them from Earth.

When a comet gets near the Sun, it starts to warm up. The ice inside it turns into gas and dust, which float away and form a bright halo, this is like when you blow on a cold day and your breath becomes visible in the air! This glowing cloud makes the comet look bigger and brighter.

Comets move around the Sun in long, stretched-out paths called orbits. Some comets come by every few years, while others might not be seen again for hundreds of years, like a shy friend who only visits once in a while!