A distant, boundless, deep blue and inaccessible sky, it always attracted people. No wonder man sought to fly up to the clouds, like a bird. No wonder it was here that he settled his gods and guardian angels.
But the sky was not always favorable to earthly inhabitants. Quite often it happened that trials rained down on people, as if from a cornucopia. And then they tried to find explanations, or at least a harbinger. These included sudden hurricanes and storms, eclipses of the sun and moon, bizarre drawings on the clouds. One of the messengers of misfortune was considered a comet. For a fairly long time, people believed that when a comet flies to the ground - this is not good.
So what is a comet really? The very name of this phenomenon comes from the Greek word, which means "tail" or "shaggy, tailed." Today, a comet is called a celestial body, followed by a train of brilliant particles. You can see it with the naked eye quite rarely: once every ten to fifteen years. For example, in 1997, comet Hale Bopp flew to Earth, a bright radiance from which every inhabitant of the planet could see.
The tailed luminaire slowly floats through the starry sky. When people did not know exactly what a comet was, they tried to solve its riddle and explain to themselves its significance. But clearly she was feared both then and now - in the twenty-first century. In 1527, a space visitor caused such horror on earthlings that many became ill or died only from fear! But already to
At the end of the sixteenth century, astronomers found that comets have their own orbits, obey all the laws of physics. Isaac Newton in 1610 calculated the path of one such body and found out that it has the shape of an infinitely elongated curve. Edmond Halley studied comets regularly approaching the Earth and came to the conclusion that we were visited not by numerous luminaries, but only by several of them several times. Their orbits with a certain frequency are suppressed with the route of our planet. In support of his theory, he predicted the next appearance of a comet named after him - Halley, in 1758. The last time she was seen in 1986.
When a person learned to use a telescope, what a comet is - everyone learned. And over time, we got high-quality images from the depths of space. Today, scientists are aware of 1, 200 comets. Twenty-five percent of them return several times to the Sun.
The comet consists of
sharp parts. This is, first of all, the head, which has a core and shell, as well as a tail that stretches over a long distance. Bright stars shine through it. The head is formed by solid particles (frozen gases and ice). The size of such a body can be several kilometers, and the length of its tail - millions of kilometers. When the sun is approaching the sun, the ice begins to melt and evaporate. Several of these circles, stretched over millions of light years, and the comet will disappear without a trace in space.
Now you know what a comet really is, and you can not be afraid of its appearance in the night sky. On the contrary, look forward to her arrival and enjoy the bewitching appearance.
