coma
Sign in to savecloud of gas or a trail around a comet or asteroid
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 688 inbound references to coma, and connects out to comet, Rosetta and C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE).
It is catalogued under the topic Comets.
Vinony links it to 37 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- physical phenomenon
- Part of
- comet
Show 2 more facts
- Commons category
- Coma (cometary)
- different from
- Koma
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Structure of Comet Holmes in infrared, as seen by an infrared space telescope
The coma is the nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet, formed when the comet passes near the Sun in its highly elliptical orbit. As the comet warms, parts of it sublimate; this gives a comet a diffuse appearance when viewed through telescopes and distinguishes it from stars. The word coma comes from the Greek κόμη (kómē), which means "hair" and is the origin of the word comet itself.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “coma” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.