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A ______ is made up of a solid nucleus, a coma, and one or two tails |
Explanation
A comet is a ball of frozen gas and rock, which travels through space in a long, oval path around the Sun. They are called dirty snowballs because of their composition. A comet is made up of a solid nucleus, a coma, and one or two tails. The coma is the cloudy atmosphere that surrounds the comet's nucleus, or center. The nucleus of most comets is about 10 miles or less in diameter. When a comet gets near the Sun, the frozen gas begins to melt, producing the coma and a large tail of boiling gas. A comet can have a dust tail, a gas tail, or both -- it depends on how much dust is in its nucleus. Tails can stretch for millions of miles.