Comets
Comets have been known for thousands of years. Records of Halley's Comet date back to ancient China in 240 BC. The famed Bayeux Tapestry memorializes the Norman Conquest in 1066 mentions the arrival of Halley's Comet as an apparition.
There are five parts to every comet. There are as follows:
Nucleus: The main part of the comet. It is somewhat stable; is made mostly of ice and gases, with some dust and other solids.
Coma: A dense cloud of water, CO2 and other neutral gases raised from the nucleus of the comet.
Hydrogen Cloud: A gigantic (millions of km in diameter), but scattered, envelope of neutral hydrogen gas.
Dust Tail: At up to 10 kilometers long of dust particles the size of smoke this part of the comet is the most outstanding part of the comet to the unaided human eye.
Ion Tail: This gets in length of as much as several hundred kilometers long of plasma, and is netted with rays and streamers caused by the comet interacting with the solar wind.
Meteors and Meteorites
Meteors and meteorites are smaller pieces of rock and dust that go through the atmosphere. They either burn up from the friction or actually hit the ground.
Meteors, also known as shooting stars, are actually dust particles from a comets orbit or small rocks that hit Earths atmosphere at high speeds. A meteor fall or a meteor shower shows brilliant lights falling though the sky. During a meteor shower, there is a point in the sky in which it seems all the meteors fall from. That point is called the radiant of the shower.
Meteorites, on the other hand, are larger pieces of rock that fall from space and actually hit the ground. If they are big enough, they will actually leave a crater on the Earth's surface. Meteorites are usually chunks from an asteroid that falls to earth as metal or rock.
