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Comets Training Center

Ari Raider's Training Materials · Outer Space Odyssey · Training Center 6 of 6

Comets

The Comet Trail has gone dark, and relighting the tail only works if it points the way a real one points — which is not the way most people guess.

What you're training for

On the Comet Trail, there's nothing to follow but dark. The tail catches for whoever knows which way it truly streams. Train here first; prove it in the simulation.

The science

  • A comet is ice and dust — astronomers call it a dirty snowball, and they mean it literally.
  • Near the Sun, heat loosens gas and dust off its surface, and sunlight and the solar wind blow that material off it.
  • So the tail always points away from the Sun — even when the comet is flying back out, its tail travels in front of it.
  • The tail is blown, not dragged — more like hair in the wind than exhaust behind a rocket.

Teach it today — a fan and some streamers

Comet on a string. A fan is the Sun. A ball trailing crepe streamers is the comet. Walk it in an orbit around the fan and watch: the streamers always blow away from the fan — including on the way out, when the tail leads. Have students predict before each leg of the orbit; the outbound leg fools nearly everyone.

Trained and ready? Prove it at Stop 6 — the Comet Trail. Free, no logins, progress saved on the device.

Enter the Realm at Stop 6

Resources in this training center

Worksheets, reading passages, flashcards and printables for this lesson are being added — new resources land here first. Get one email a month when they do, or browse the whole free library.

The hands-on half: the Outer Space Odyssey Adventure Kit puts six real specimens, six Digs, six Gemlings and the Realm map in your students' hands — $19.99, or $15 a student for classrooms. The rarest Gemling in the set glows in the dark.

More Outer Space Odyssey training

Mars & Surfaces · Planet Temperatures · Light & Shadow · Solar System Formation · Space Rocks · Comets · Enter the Adventure →

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