Comets

A Comet looks like a star with a tail. Some comets do not have tails, and look like hazy, round spots of light. But most comets have three parts; a nucleus, a head, and a tail. The bright central nucleus may be nearly as large as the earth, which is about 7,900 miles in diameter. The head, or coma, surrounding the nucleus, may be from 30,000 to 100,000 miles in diameter. The tail, which look like a bright …

…showed that the comet had appeared in1066, 1456, 1531, and 1607. Before science explained what comets are, men feared them greatly. in 1456, Halley's comet frightened everyone in Europe so much that Christian churches added a prayer to be saved from "the Devil, and the comet." In 1910, the earth passed through the tail of halley's comet without any noticeable effect. Even if the earth ran into the head of the comet, there might be only a shower of meteors.