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Could the dinosaurs have seen the asteroid that killed them?

The answer is yes; for a few nights prior to the impact (assuming they had eyes with a similar sensitivity to our own and could look up!). It could be a bit longer than this if the body was larger ...
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How can comets have tails if there's no air resistance in space?

There are two forces that can cause the formation of a tail: the solar wind and radiation pressure. The first misconception in your question is "the dust [travels] slower than the nucleus". The tail ...
• 88.7k

How can comets have tails if there's no air resistance in space?

First, there is not just one tail, it is several, but when traveling far from a star, they are "aligned". When it gets closer the different materials behave differently, both depending on the ...
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Where is the Perseids meteor shower coming from?

The comet sheds material each time it get close to the sun. The sun heats this dirty snow ball, the ice evaporates and tears dust and smaller rocks with it. These dust particles then follow a similar ...
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How can Halley's Comet be predictable?

Each time Halley's comet passes us, we can make a pretty good estimate of its current orbit, and determine how close it will get to the massive bodies of the solar system like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, ...
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Have we ever observed a body, such as a large asteroid, "hitting" the Sun?

Yes and here's a video of "a Giant Comet Hitting the Sun": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mat4dWpszoQ The impact occurred sometime during May 10-11, 2011. The comet was not named but believed to ...
• 356
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How close to escape velocity are most Oort-cloud comets?

It's a consequence of the reversibility of orbits that anything that free-falls from a near-interstellar distance arrives at nearly escape velocity, or faster. Take the Vis-Viva equation, the formula ...
• 3,115
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Why do comets appear to have a continuous supply of dust?

The rate of loss of mass from a comet is perhaps surprisingly low. A paper The calculation of $Af\rho$ and mass loss rate for comets gives a rate for a "typical" comet at 1.29AU as 153kg/s. A typical ...
• 88.7k

Can a comet orbit a planet?

Its very unlikely for a comet to become a satellite of an inner solar system planet. Much less likely than it is for an asteroid. Most asteroids are on fairly circular orbits, and so the relative ...
• 88.7k
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Can two comets travel together as one?

Yes, binary comets do exist; 8P/Tuttle is an example of one. This is an area that is still being heavily researched, but it is suspected that binary comets can "form from collision, mutual capture, or ...
• 6,084
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Do comets contain any significant amounts of iridium?

I also googled "iridium content of comets", and the first result was https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2013/04/dartmouth-researchers-say-comet-killed-dinosaurs Now there is currently no consensus on ...
• 88.7k
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Size and mass of comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4)

The confusion comes from the difference between the nucleus and the coma. The nucleus is a small icy body, only a few km across. The coma is the cloud of gas and dust released from the nucleus as it ...
• 88.7k
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Does Halley's Comet travel past the outer bounds of the Oort Cloud?

No. Halley's Comet has an aphelion of 35 AU, which is far less than the believed boundaries of the Oort cloud. Any object on an elliptical orbit with a perihelion of 0.6 AU and an aphelion of 2,000 ...
• 3,115
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when are you able to see Halley's comet, and for how long?

Halley's comet orbits the sun and its orbit lasts 75 years. The orbit is a long elliptical orbit. For most of those 75 years it is a cold black dot, and frozen solid in the outer solar system. But a ...
• 88.7k
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Why would the Perseids meteor rate fall off after maximum faster than the increase before maximum?

A very interesting question. Neither Bruce McClure at EarthSky nor I knew the answer, despite the fact that the observed gradual rise in numbers for the Perseids - and their quick drop-off - is ...
• 246

Comet Neowise c2020 f3 will return in ~6800 years, how can we be sure Earth will be in the right place to see it then?

The time of the orbit is not well known but the inclination can't change as much (small changes in velocity due to outgassing can significantly change the orbital period, but can't change the ...
• 88.7k
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Do some comets spin? If so, how fast?

Yes, comets spin although measuring it can be tricky due to the coma and outgassing from the nucleus. It's easiest to measure the rotation period when the comet is inactive near aphelion although this ...
• 7,170

Could the dinosaurs have seen the asteroid that killed them?

A carbonaceous condrite has the same reflectivity as the moon at around 7-13%. If there was ice, if the tail was 10 times smaller than Hale-Bopp, it would have auspiciously covered half of the sky. ...
• 3,158
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Blue color of ion (plasma) comet tails

Close, but not quite right - the blue light is indeed emission from CO$^+$, but it's from the CO$^+$ ions themselves, with no need for recombination to CO; that (ionized) molecule has a strong set of ...
• 4,259
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Is it possible for a virus to come from a meteorite?

There is, believe it or not, a scientific theory regarding this: panspermia. According to the panspermia hypothesis, microbes "hitch" a lift on bodies leaving a planet. They then travel through space ...
• 33.8k
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Why does Kepler's "Big Picture" of comet 67P look so strange? And what is the significance?

One thing to keep in mind is that the Kepler instrument is not a telescope like Hubble. It is a photometer and though it uses CCDs to look at the sky, it doesn't return a picture in the usual sense. ...
• 811
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Do astronomers generally agree that the distinction between comets and asteroids is not so clear?

If we're going to get technical, Asteroids are not really an official name anymore. In 2006, when the IAU redefined what a planet was (and thus demoted Pluto), they also decided to more formally ...
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Where is the Perseids meteor shower coming from?

The comet releases lots of dust particles. The sunlight pushes these particles into orbits not quite the same as the comet Some particles will be pushed into faster orbits, some will be pushed into ...
• 88.7k

Companion Sun the cause of comet impacts with Earth

Ahh, I see you've met our friend, the hypothetical star known as Nemesis. I don't know which scientist(s) you're referring to, but the idea goes back quite a while. The original theory was created by ...
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How did water get on Earth

The key finding why we think Earth's water came from Asteroids (big rocks) and not Comets (small rocks) is the Deuterium/Hydrogen ratio that we can measure in several sources. When a star forms, it ...
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What was that Asteroid/Comet in the 90s?

Was it Comet Hale-Bopp? It was discovered in 1995, but made a very close approach in 1997, earning it the nickname "The Great Comet of 1997". Wikipedia states As it passed perihelion on April 1, ...
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Can a comet orbit a planet?

Given that moons commonly orbit planets, why do we never encounter a comet orbiting a planet? By definition, it would no longer be a comet, but rather a moon (or more properly a satellite). Comets ...
• 14.4k
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Does Jupiter help to protect the Earth against comets/asteroids impacts?

Wordy answer, mostly light on Math: The key word here (and the article uses this word) is "long period comets". First there's Jupiter impacts, but that's a relatively low percentage, cause even ...
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How do comets' nuclei stick together?

Van-der-Waals forces and gravitation are the main answer. The main property keeping together bodies smaller than a few $100 {\rm km}$ are their constituents surface forces between the grains (van-der-...
• 11k