Come Comets Trivia Quiz

Answer: A Greek phrase meaning 'hairy star'

A comet is a small body going around the Sun in a long (sometimes very long), elliptical orbit. Unlike planets, moons and asteroids, a substantial fraction of a comet's composition is volatile ices.

When the comet comes within the influence of the sun's heat, these ices sublimate (transition directly from solid to gas), forming the body's glowing atmosphere or coma and the streaming tail. To the ancient Greeks, the earliest astronomers in the Western tradition, a comet suggested a fleeing woman, hair streaming behind her. And, the name has stuck

Answer: Space

The ancient Greek philosopher and natural historian Aristotle thought comets were sublunary phenomena. Specifically, he thought them to be dry exhalations of Earth that caught fire high in the atmosphere. This was not one of his better ideas. However, his body of work - the incorrect notions included - held sway in European thought for centuries.

It was only with the work of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that the true nature of comets as heavenly or space objects - beyond the moon's orbit - was established. In 1577, Brahe tried to triangulate the distance to a bright comet. But, since he could not measure any parallax, he concluded that the comet was at least four times further away from Earth than the Moon.

Answer: They are conglomerates of solid and volatile/icy material.

A typical comet has a solid conglomerate core or nucleus a few miles (kilometers) in diameter, made up of silicate (rock), dust particles (quite often organic)and volatile ices (frozen gasses), such as water ice, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and ammonia..

As the comet draws close to the sun's heat, some of these ices sublimate and the warmed froth of dust and gas released from the nucleus first form the luminous coma, the comet's temporary atmosphere. Then blown away from the nucleus by the solar wind, some of the coma flows into space, separating into two tails. One of these is made up of subatomic particles and molecules ionized by ultraviolet photons from the Sun. The other tail, long and curving, is formed by the dust. Ion tails point almost exactly away from the Sun and glow bluish because of the presence of CO+ ions, whereas dust tails tend to be white or yellow.

Answer: False

Each time a comet makes its nearest approach to the sun (perihelion) it loses some of its mass as its frozen gasses melt and stream away in the form of the coma and tail. A comet that returns at long intervals (long period comet),disintegrates gradually over cosmic time periods. On the other hand, if a comet has a small orbit and returns often (short period comet), it fades away quickly.

The best known example of this phenomenon Is Biela's Comet. Rediscovered in 1826 by an Australian astronomer, Wilhelm von Biela, the comet that came to bear his name had first been seen by the French discoverer of heavenly objects Charles Messier in 1772. Calculating the comet's path, Biela found that its period was just under seven years. Right on schedule, Biela's Comet returned in 1832, 1839 and 1846. However, by the 1846 return, something peculiar had happened. Now there were two comets, one fainter than the other traveling in tandem. On the next approach in 1852, the paths of the twin comets had diverged. Unfavorable positioning made it all but impossible to observe the 1859 return. But in 1866, viewing conditions would be good.

Though observers waited and watched, no sign of either part of the comet appeared. And it has never been seen since. Or, has it? On November 27, 1872, a brilliant meteor shower was observed radiating from the part of the sky where the comet had been predicted to cross Earth's orbit.. This meteor shower, dubbed the Bielads or the Andromedids (since they originated from the direction of Andromeda) continued on schedule, diminishing with every return until, by 2024, these last remnants of Biela's Comet had attenuated out of existence.

Answer: Any of these

Periodic comets such as Comet Halley and Comet Swift-Tuttle, those that return on a regular schedule to the inner solar system, are on elliptical orbits. One-time visitors, thought to originate mainly in the Oort Cloud, have hyperbolic (eccentricity of 1.0) or parabolic (eccentricity greater than 1.0) orbits. That is, the orbits of these comets are open on one end like a hairpin with the curve at the nearest approach to the sun.

The Great Comet of 44B.C., also known as Caesar's Comet, thought to be the brightest daylight comet in recorded history at an estimated apparent magnitude of-4.0, is thought to have had a parabolic orbit. That is, it would have started its orbital journey at a given point, traveled a straight line, swung around the sun and then exited on a line parallel to its line of entry. Comet C/1980 E1 has the largest eccentricity of any known hyperbolic comet in the Solar System, having an eccentricity of 1.057. Barring any unforeseen perturbations of its orbit, this comet will eventually leave the Solar System.

Answer: No

There are long period comets and short period comets. Returning in just over three years, Ence's Comet has the shortest known orbital period of any comet. At the opposite end of the scale, the Great Comet of 1976 (Comet West) has a period of about two hundred fifty thousand years. Countless comets' return times fall between these extremes.

Answer: The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud

Most comets come from the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud. The Kuiper Belt is a torus (doughnut-shaped structure) surrounding the main solar system roughly on the plane of the ecliptic, while the Oort Cloud is a spherical structure enclosing the solar system. It is thought that some comets with parabolic orbits originate outside the solar system altogether, in interstellar space.

Answer: Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley (November 8, 1656 to January 14, 1742) was a multi-talented scientist, who worked in the fields of Astronomy, mathematics, physics and cartography. A fellow of the Royal Society and friend of Sir Isaac Newton, he was Britain's second Astronomer Royal, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720.

One of Halley's great interests was comets; specifically, their orbits. He collected all the reports he could of past comet sightings, and discovered that the comet of 1682, that he had himself observed, appeared to follow the same orbital path as the comets of 1607, 1532 and 1456. Applying Newton's law of universal gravitation, he was able to predict the year of the comet's return. Sadly, that year was 1758, sixteen years after the astronomer's death. However, it was named in his honor upon its reappearance.

Answer: Yes

Launched on January 12, 2005 NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft was the first human artifact designed to make contact with a comet and study its interior composition. To do this, the main flyby spacecraft deployed an impact probe to collide with its target, Comet Temple1. The probe worked as designed, hitting the target at a relative velocity of about twenty-three thousand miles per hour (thirty-seven thousand kilometers per hour) and producing an explosion the equivalent of 4.7 tons of TNT. The resulting crater was estimated to be about 490 feet (150 meters) in diameter. Both the flyby craft and the probe (up until three seconds before impact) produced a wealth of photographs that allowed investigators to study the structure and substance of Comet Temple1.

Even if the flyby craft had not continued on a supplemental comet hunting and photographing mission until 2013, Deep Impact would have been an historic mission in the annals of solar system exploration.

Answer: The Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry is a narrative work of textile art (embroidery on linen) , created nearly contemporaneously with the events it depicts, chronicling the momentous year of 1066 and concluding with William of Normandy's decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings. Both a masterpiece of 11th-century Romanesque art and a primary source of historical information for the period, the tapestry is housed at the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Bayeux, Normandy France.

Thought to be the oldest depiction of Halley's Comet in art, the tapestry shows the comet ominously in the sky at the moment of the ill-fated English King Harold Godwinson's coronation on January Sixth, 1066.