That prospect turned me into a serious shopper for trip cancellation and interruption insurance (one policy usually covers both), a product I had always dismissed as a rip-off. Like other value-oriented consumers, I had seen no need to add several hundred dollarsâ worth of vacation insurance to the price of a vacation. Until that trip. Since then we have insured a couple of other trips, but never needed to make a claim. The only time we came close was in the wake of 9/11.
What is a Comet? A comet is a very small solar system body made mostly of ices mixed with smaller amounts of dust and rock. Most comets are no larger than a few kilometres across. The main body of the comet is called the nucleus, and it can contain water, methane, nitrogen and other ices. When a comet is heated by the Sun, its ices begin to sublimate (similar to the way dry ice âfizzesâ when you leave it in sunlight).
SUMMARY: Comets are icy planetesimals that formed in the outer regions of the solar system and assembled in two distinct regions: the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. Comets are rather small compared to planets and moons. The comets that visit the inner solar system are no bigger than 20 km in size â the size of a city!