comet

/ˈkɑmət/

/ˈkɒmɪt/

Other forms: comets

A comet is a small, icy object that orbits the sun and has a long "tail" of gas. Some comets can be seen from Earth every few years, while others pass by once in a person's lifetime.

Comets are made of ice, dust, and tiny pieces of rock, but to people on Earth, they look like streaks or smudges across the night sky. When the Earth's orbit takes it through one of these comets' tails, their dust burns up in our atmosphere and results in a meteor shower. In Old French, the word was comete, ultimately from a Greek root, kometes, which literally means "long-haired star."

Definitions of comet

1. noun

   (astronomy) a relatively small extraterrestrial body consisting of a frozen mass that travels around the sun in a highly elliptical orbit
   type of:

   estraterrestrial body, extraterrestrial object

   a natural object existing outside the earth and outside the earth's atmosphere