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Orbits Of Comets
Planets have almost circular
orbits, whereas comets have stretched out paths
around the Sun.
A comet is at aphelion when its orbit is
farthest from the Sun. It is at perihelion
when it is closest to the Sun .Due to gravitational
effects; a comet will travel fastest at perihelion
and will slow down as it approaches aphelion.
Comets can be secret by their orbital period:
that is, the time it takes them to make one
complete trip around the Sun. Comets with
short and intermediate orbital periods like
comet Halley, whose orbital period is 76 years,
spend most of their time between Pluto and
the Sun. These comets began as asteroids in
the Kuiper belt, but a gravitational "push"
from the planets, especially Jupiter, swung
them closer to the Sun. Some of their orbital
periods are shorter than 200 years. |
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Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is a
picture of a comet that has been thoroughly perturbed
by Jupiter's gravitational belongings. A long-period
comet will have an orbital period of more than
200 years. Hale- Bopp, for example, completes
an orbit every 2,400 years. Hale-Bopp once satisfied
an orbit every 4,000 years, but during its last
visit to the inner solar system, the comet approved
so close up to Jupiter that the planet's gravitational
force changed its orbit. Scientists think that
this type of comet spends most of its time way
out in the Oort cloud at the utmost edge of our
solar system.
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