Not for retail poster use Comet Hyakutake. Optical image showing Comet Hyakutake, one of the brightest comets to appear in the sky. Comets are bodies,

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Not for retail poster use Comet Hyakutake. Optical image showing Comet Hyakutake, one of the brightest comets to appear in the sky. Comets are bodies, mostly formed by water ice, which orbit the Sun with usually highly elongated orbits. When a comet approaches the Sun the water ice vaporises forming the coma, a cloud of gas and dust which can be up to 15 times the diameter of the Earth, and a tail. Comets have two types of tails: a gas tail (bluish here) which shows wisp and long filaments of excited gases, and a smooth and featureless dust tail (faint yellow) in which dust particles reflect sunlight. The image was taken on March 21st 1996.

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Size: 5020px × 3561px
Photo credit: © GORDON GARRADD/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: 21, 1996, astronomy, coma, comet, cometary, cosmology, gas, hyakutake, march, science, tail