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Halley's
Comet is one of the most important comets that ever have been found in space. It appears every 70 years and is a bright, shining
blue or silver light. The comet is approximately 10 miles long (the nucleus). Abraham Lincoln is known to have seen it two
times in his life, once when he was extremely young and another time was when he was an adult. The nucleus is the color of
black soot, although the main , shining part is known to be a silvery white and a very bright blue. Many people have reported
it to be a very light highlight of purple or lilac.
The
famous comet was discovered by Edmond Halley, an amazing man, who was wealthy and adsurdly rich. His father gave him enough
money to travel to the Southern Hemisphere. He learned how to create space maps, which was an important trait to learn at
the time. This was useful, and not long after he spotted the comet we now know as the Halley's Comet. Edmond Halley was known
for for making telescopes, also a great trait to have during the time he was in, and was very well known after his comet discovery.
Halley's Comet is one of the famous comets known, and is
also an easy and fun to learn about it. So if you're going for a research topic on comets or any certain comet, go for Halley's Comet!
On July 23, 1995, an unusually large
and bright comet was seen outside of Jupiter's orbit by Alan Hale of New Mexico and Thomas Bopp of Arizona. Careful analysis
of Hubble Space Telescope images suggested that its intense brightness was due to its exceptionally large size. While the
nuclei of most comets are about 1.6 to 3.2 km (1 to 2 miles) across, Hale-Bopp's was estimated to be 40 km (25 miles) across.
It was visible even through bright city skies, and may have been the most viewed comet in recorded history. Comet Hale-Bopp
holds the record for the longest period of naked-eye visibility: an astonishing 19 months. It will not appear again for another
2,400 years.
This comet was first seen in July 1862
by American astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. As Comet Swift-Tuttle moves closer to the Sun every 120 years, it leaves
behind a trail of dust debris that provides the ingredients for a spectacular fireworks display seen in July and August. As
Earth passes through the remnants of this dust tail, we can see on a clear night the Perseid meteor shower. Comet Swift-Tuttle
is noted as the comet some scientists predicted could one day collide with Earth because the two orbits closely intercept
each other. The latest calculations show that it will pass a comfortable 24 million km (15 million miles) from Earth on its
next trip to the inner Solar System.
On January 30, 1996, Yuji Hyakutake (pronounced "hyah-koo-tah-kay"), an amateur astronomer
from southern Japan, discovered a new comet using a pair of binoculars. In the spring of that year, this small, bright comet
with a nucleus of 1.6 to 3.2 km (1 to 2 miles) made a close flyby of Earth — sporting one of the longest tails ever
observed. The Hubble Space Telescope studied the nucleus of this comet in great detail. This is not Comet Hyakutake's first
visit to the inner Solar System. Astronomers have calculated its orbit and believe it was here about 8,000 years ago. Its
orbit will not bring it near the Sun again for about 14,000 years
Between
July 16 and July 22, 1994, more than 20 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the planet Jupiter. Astronomers
Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy discovered the comet in 1993. The Hubble Space Telescope took many spectacular
pictures of this event as the comet's pieces crashed into Jupiter's southern hemisphere. It was the first collision of two
Solar System bodies ever to be recorded. The impacts created atmospheric plumes many thousands of kilometers high that showed
hot "bubbles" of gas with large dark "scars" covering the planet's sky.
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