Joyce Angelica L. Delorino.

VIII-Sealtiel
An asteroid is a small, inactive body, made up of rock, carbon or metal, that orbits the Sun.
A comet is also a small, but sometimes active object, made of dirt and ice. Comets are able to be seen by their
characteristic tails as they become affected by the heat of the Sun. The tail of a comet is pushed away from the Sun.
It does not necessarily trail behind it.

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Comets and asteroids
Basically the distinction between asteroids and comets is made on visual appearance: comets show a perceptible
coma (a fuzzy appearance) while asteroids do not.
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More to the point, comets have substantial amounts of ice and volatile material, and as comets approach the Sun, the
ice vaporizes and creates that "fuzzy" appearance. Also, comets follow highly elliptical paths, approaching the inner
solar system and then retreating to a considerable distance from the Sun. If they stayed close in to the Sun, all the ice
would vaporize, and they would cease to be comets.

Asteroids are larger, and primarily stony or metallic. We do not expect to find much ice on an asteroid.
A comet is a frozen mass of ice, gas, and dust that travels around the sun. An asteroid is mostly rock but may have
interior layers of ice.

A comet is a small, frozen mass of dust and gas revolving in an orbit around the Sun. Some of the ice vaporizes as
the comet nears the sun, forming a visible coma around its solid body and sometimes a long tail of ions that points
away from the Sun.


An asteroid is any one of thousands of small planetoids, sometimes called planetesimals, having a diameter
anywhere from a few meters to a few hundred kilometers. Only about 200 asteroids have diameters exceeding 100
kilometers. Most rotate on their axes every 5 to 20 hours. Most asteroids in the solar system are located in the
'asteroid belt', where they orbit the sun in the space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some smaller asteroids
may orbit larger asteroids as satellites. Asteroids are different from planets and moons mainly because of their much
smaller size, and they differ from comets because they have neither a coma nor a tail.
Comets and asteroids are different from meteoroids.


Meteoroids are any of the countless small, solid bodies traveling through outer space,which are seen as meteors,
sometimes called shooting stars or falling stars, when they glow brightly after being heated by friction as they enter
and pass through Earth's atmosphere

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The main difference between asteroids and comets is what they are made of. Asteroids are made up of metals and
rocky material, while comets are made up of ice, dust and some rocky material. Both asteroids and comets were
formed early in the history of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Asteroids formed much closer to the Sun,
where it was too warm for ices to remain solid. Comets formed farther from the Sun where ices would not melt.
Comets which approach the Sun lose material with each orbit because some of their ice melts and
vaporizes to form a tail.