• Question: when you look through the worlds largest telescope are they powerful enough to see the stars as the comets that they really are?

    Asked by Amazing person called Aston Martin to Helen on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 19 Nov 2014:


      Hi! 🙂
      We can definitely see stars in lots more detail than we can with our eyes. We’ve even detected planets in other solar systems, by looking for the dip in light as they move in front of the star they are orbiting. Another way we can detect planets is by detecting the gravitational pull they have on their star – this makes the star ‘wobble’ a little bit.
      Comets are a whole other thing though. Comets are little clumps of ice, frozen gases and rock, and they come from the very outside of our solar system – way past Neptune and Pluto. As they approach the Sun on their very long orbits, some of the gas and ice evaporates and we get these spectacular tails to look at!

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