Comets are made of dust, ice, and gas. They orbit around the sun just like our planet Earth. Comets look like big boulders with fire on them ,or stars with cloudy tails of light trailing after them. Before people understood what comets were they were frightened by them. People thought they were also signs of something bad would happen to them, but we know that is not true. Astronomers believe that comets come from a part of our Solar System called the Oort Cloud. This was discovered by a man named Jan Henrick Oort in 1950. It is a cloud left over from when the Solar System was made. A comet is formed by gravity between the Sun and the Oort cloud that causes dust and ice to come together. The most solid part of a comet is the nucleus. The coma is a bright ball of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus. A comets tail can be up to 60 miles long. The comets tail always points away from the sun. Hallys' comet is the most famous comet of all times. This comet passes past Earth every 76 years. Hallys' comet is named after an astronomer from England named Edmond Hally lived from 1656 to 1742. He was the person to figure out when the comet would return. The last time the comet came by was in 1986. It has been seartain to come in 2061. In the summer of 1996 a comet called Hyakutake passed over the United States .It was bright to the people every were. You could see the comet with out a telescope that's how easy it would be to see. Comets make very little approches to the sun perhaps within 621,000 (1 million km) or less. They are also called the sun-gazers, and many never survive the brief trip around the surface of the sun. Some comets may fall into the sun. Small comets may break into pieces. In 1983, comet called Iras - Araki - Alcot passed 3 million miles away from earth. These comets are very dangerous but neat things.

On Jan.1, 1801 the Italian astronomer Giuseppi Piazzi was looking through his telescope. He saw a small unknown object between Mars & Jupiter. These objects made of rock and metal, are called asteroids. Astronomers think there are many thousand more then they have studied. Their was an asteroid that was discovered by a man named Giuseppi Piazzi it is named 1 Ceres. Its 485 miles in diameter. Ceres is the biggest asteroid. Pallas , Juno, and Vesta are three other big asteroids.

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