ELI5: What is a comet?

A comet is like a dirty snowball flying through space.

Imagine you're making a snowball, but instead of just snow, you mix in some dirt, dust, and maybe even some ice cream (but frozen really hard!). That’s kind of what a comet is – a frozen ball of ice, dust, and rock.

• These cosmic snowballs live way, way out in the cold parts of our solar system, far away from the sun.
• Think of the Sun like a big, warm heater. When a comet gets closer to the Sun, the "ice cream" (frozen gases) starts to melt and turn into gas.
• This gas, along with some of the dust, creates a bright, fuzzy cloud around the comet's center, called a coma.
• The Sun's wind (solar wind) pushes this gas and dust away from the comet, creating a long, beautiful tail that points away from the Sun. It’s like blowing on cotton candy! The candy (coma) gets pushed into a long stream (tail).