Sentences with phrase «icy nucleus»

Comets are surrounded by a huge cloud of atomic hydrogen because water (H2O) vaporizes from the icy nucleus, and solar ultraviolet light breaks it apart into hydrogen and oxygen.

But alas, future sightings of this object probably aren't in the cards: Less than a week after the comet swooped past the sun, its icy nucleus shattered and disappeared, likely due to its brief but close call with extreme heat.

Not exact matches

The images reveal a narrow, well - defined jet of dust ejected by the comet's icy, fragile nucleus.

Smaller «cometesimals» might loosely join to make a nucleus riddled with weak seams, or the whole thing could be a coherent icy dirt ball.

«The icy small bodies warm up as they approach the Sun, and the ice sublimes to form a coma [a dense cloud of gas and dust particles around a nucleus] and often a tail, making the comets observable,» she explained.

Because a comet's nucleus is made up of a combination of icy materials and loosely consolidated «dirt,» when a comet is heated by passing close to the Sun, it more or less slowly disintegrates, producing the visible tail.

Because what happens is generally what happens to a comet that doesn't hit the sun: It disintegrates into nothingness, as its icy, gravel nucleus proves no match for the sun's heat.

Icy regions on the nucleus are activated as they rotate into sunlight, ejecting large amounts of dust in the jets that are faintly visible in this image.