Space Crafts: Comet on a Stick
Make your own celestial “dirty snowball” with common household materials
a simple all-ages activity
A comet is a small (in astronomical terms) frozen body consisting of ice, rock, dust, and frozen gases, which orbits the sun. Because of their contents, comets are sometimes called “dirty snowballs” or “icy dirtballs.” Occasionally, gravity brings a comet’s orbit closer to the Sun. The comet then heats up, causing its frozen contents to melt, vaporize, and spew outward in “tails.” This is when comets become visible.
Due to the vaporization process, comets disintegrate a little bit with each orbit around the Sun. Eventually, they break up and evaporate completely—or they crash into the Sun or another celestial body.
Photo of Hale-Bopp comet above pazin, croatia, in 1997 (image credit: Philipp Salzgeber, wikimedia commons)
Comets were likely formed in the early history of the solar system, about 4.5 million years ago. They’re thought to have brought water and organic compounds—the building blocks of life—to the early Earth.
Make Your Own Comet
Materials:
Popsicle stick (craft stick), chopstick, or un-sharpened pencil
Ribbon (1-3 colors)
Scissors
Aluminum Foil
Procedure:
Cut five pieces of ribbon: two long (about 12”), 2 medium (about 6”), and 1 short (about 4”). Your comet will be more astronomically correct if you use three colors of ribbon (more on this later)
Cut three square pieces of aluminum foil
Tie all five pieces of the ribbon around one end of the stick (keep your knot as close to the end of the stick as possible)
Pick up a square of foil in one hand, and pinch it around the end of the stick. Use your other hand to hold the ribbons off to one side.
Crinkle the foil around the end of the stick—it doesn’t have to be 100% circular: real asteroids have bumpy, irregular shapes!
Repeat this process with the other two pieces of foil, building your comet one layer at a time. Try to keep the ribbon tails coming out of the side of the foil ball, versus at the bottom by the stick—this will improve the way they trail behind your comet when it is in “orbit.”
Ta da…
Your comet
is ready
for orbit!
How is our craft comet like a real comet?
nasa animation of a comet entering the inner solar system. Light from the Sun warms the comet core, an object so small it cannot be seen at this scale. Ices within the comet are vaporized by the heat, streaming out from the tiny core forming a giant halo around it: the coma. Particles of dust, carried along with the gas, are blown out to form a visible tail that extends away from the Sun. (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
