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Article: Comet Hale-Bopp.
- Article from:
- Highlights for Children
- Article date:
- April 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Highlights for Children, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Between Jupiter and Saturn, a blob of dirt and ice bigger than Mount Everest tumbled toward the Sun. Astronomers call objects like this one comets, and they describe them as dirty snowballs.
If this object had been an ordinary comet, no one would have noticed it from so far away. Most comets are not discovered until they come inside Jupiter's orbit, where the Sun's heat blasts away some of the comet in a cloud of dust and gases.
But even in this cold part of the solar system, the new comet began to release a cloud of material. And on July 23, 1995, that cloud was just big enough to be seen from Earth, where two stargazers happened to spot it.
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