Comet tale: Prof John Brown’s research shows how comets behave

COMETS have been observed from ancient times and are considered bad omens.Scientists believe a comet hitting the earth 65 billion years ago wiped out the dinosaurs.

They were historically referred to as “dirty snowballs” and were believed to be made of ice and dust. But they also contain other elements such as hydrogen, methane and ammonia.

Comets are collections of materials left over from the formation of the solar system 4,600 million years ago. They orbit around the Sun like planets but their orbits are more elongated and take longer.

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The most famous is Halley’s comet, named after astronomer Edmund Halley, who first calculated its orbital elements and period and that the comet of 1682 was the same one seen in 1607, and successfully predicted its return in 1759.

Comet Hale Bopp, discovered in 1995, was 1,000 times brighter than Halley and the brightest in the western sky since 1976.