 Hello everyone and welcome to our universe. Today we'll be answering the question, what is a comet? So comets are basically dirty snowballs which orbit the sun. They are generally made of ice, such as water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane, and mixed in with a bit of dust. These materials come from a time when the solar system was barely formed. Comets have an icy centre, called the nucleus, and this is surrounded by a large cloud of gas and dust called the coma. The coma is created as the ice in the nucleus is warmed up by the sun and evaporates. Comets can develop two tails as they travel closer to the sun. The straight tail is the gas tail and the curved tail is the dust tail. The gas tail is created by the solar wind. This pushes gas away from the comet's coma and pointing it straight back from the sun. The dust from the coma is not affected by the magnetic fields but is vaporised by the sun's heat and this forms a curved tail which follows the comet's orbit. So I hope that's given you a good insight into what is a comet. And of course if you'd like to know any more about comets I'll put some links in the description below. And as always if you've enjoyed the video click the like button and if you want to support the channel click subscribe and support our patreon page. Thank you for watching and thank you for your support.