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Comet Ikeya-Seki
Optical photograph of Comet Ikeya-Seki, taken on 29 October, 1965. A comet is a body of ice and dust, which moves around the Sun on a long, elliptical orbit. As it nears the Sun its surface is heated and some of the ice evaporates. The released gas is ionized by ultraviolet light from the Sun & begins to glow. The gas & dust can form two separate tails; a gas tail and a dust tail. A gas tail consists of ionised gas, swept outwards by the solar wind, whereas a dust tail is composed of grains of dust, blown outwards by solar radiation pressure.
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