What are comets like when they are on the part of their orbit that is far from the Sun? Are they as easy to..

Question

observe? AND why dont all comets make the trip around the Sun?? IS it just because they burn up...?

Answer 1

There are 2 sources of comets in our Solar System: The Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. Comets are very hard to observe when they are far away from the sun because they're made of ice and rock. Think of them as "dirty snowballs". Their tails appear when they get close to the Sun because of the solar wind.

Answer 2

Comets far from the sun are very hard to spot.  What makes a comet easy to spot when it is near the sun is the tail it leaves from all the melting ice and dust reflecting light from the sun.  Comets only have tails near the sun.  Comets are also very small and without any light reflecting off of them makes them near impossible to spot.  Most comets orbit the sun but not in an elliptical near circular orbit like planets.  Comets are attracted to the sun by it's gravity from farther out than pluto, then they swing around the sun, building up speed at the same time and then are flung back out in to space only to repeat the whole process many decades later.  Hope this helps answer your question.

Answer 3

no, they are very hard to observe, because they are so far away, they are almost near impossible to detect.

they all do make a trip around the sun, but it depends how close they get. comets are mostly made of ice, if they get too close to the sun, they will evaporate away.  

Answer 4

Comets are dirty snowballs.  When there orbit brings them in around Mars, you can  start to see their tail.  Comet tails always point away from the sun.  Comets have two tails, a blue ion tail and the white tail.

Comets have different orbits.  Some are predictable, some are not.

Having the tail does make them more easily observed.  A few years ago, we had a comet break up and crash into Jupiter.  You can do a web search and watch a video of Shoemaker-Levy crashing into Jupiter.  Not all comets crash into the Sun.