This is a simple visual tool demonstrating the basic behaviour of a comet.  The comet begins at a distance of 5 AU and is inactive.  At 4 AU, where comets become heated enough to begin to sublimate, a coma begins to form.  As the comet approaches the Sun, the coma extends into an blue ion tail and a pale yellow dust tail.  These tails always point anti-sunward, and the dust tail lags behind the comet owing to the larger particles that make up the dust tail moving significantly slower than the hydrogen and helium ions in the ion tail.  The ions are accelerated up to solar wind speeds (~400 km/s) rapidly and therefore appears straight rather than curved like the slower moving dust tail.

StatusPrototype
CategoryTool
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(1 total ratings)
AuthorJ. Douglas Patterson
GenreEducational
Made withUnity
Tagsastronomy, comet, Physics

Comments

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Nice project

cool i'm actually doing a project on comets and their tails. thanks

I'm glad you find it useful!  Please let me know how this can be improved.

there is actually a glitch where your comet will not be on the map and be in the "void" outside the screen

Can you tell me how you ended up with the comet in this state?  I'll try to fix it here in the next couple of weeks.

i had re-loaded my page while the comet was flying and then when i got in the comet looked like it was in deep space. i couldn't see the trail on the screen but i could still view the comet and it was flying off but there was nothing saying that the sprites weren't showing up on the playing screen and were only visible on the first person comet view (pun not intended). i know a fair bit about programming.  i can try to find the problem if you send me the code. if thats ok with you

thx