When would the tail of a comet appear to become longer? (1 point)
• as it gets farther from the sun
• as it gets farther from Earth
• as it gets closer to Earth
• as it gets closer to the sun
The tail of a comet would appear to become longer as it gets closer to the sun.
As a comet gets closer to the sun, the tail appears to become longer.
The tail of a comet appears to become longer as it gets closer to the sun.
To understand why, we need to know a little bit about the nature of comets. Comets are made up of ice, dust, and other organic compounds. When a comet approaches the sun, the heat causes the ice to vaporize, creating a glowing, gaseous envelope called the coma around the solid nucleus. This process is called sublimation.
The solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, then pushes the ionized gas and dust particles in the coma away from the sun. This forms two distinct tails: a dust tail and an ion tail.
The dust tail is composed of larger, heavier particles that move more slowly and follow a curved path due to gravitational forces. The ion tail, on the other hand, is made up of lighter, electrically charged particles that are strongly affected by the solar wind and thus point directly away from the sun.
When a comet is far away from the sun, there is less solar heat and less sublimation occurring, so the tail is shorter or even absent. As the comet moves closer to the sun, the heat increases, resulting in more sublimation and a longer tail. Therefore, the correct answer is that the tail of a comet appears to become longer as it gets closer to the sun.