Comet: Dual-Tail Flyby
Icy nucleus orbiting a glowing sun. The thin blue ion tail streams straight away from the sun (solar wind); the broad yellow-white dust tail curves along the comet's orbital path. Camera drifts automatically — no interaction required.
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A comet nucleus is often called a "dirty snowball": a loosely bound mixture of water ice, frozen gases (CO2, CO, methane), dust and rocky grains left over from the solar system's formation. As the nucleus nears the sun, solar heat sublimates the ices directly from solid to gas, releasing dust and forming the glowing coma and two distinct tails. The ion tail is made of charged gas molecules swept up by the solar wind's magnetic field, so it always points directly away from the sun regardless of the comet's direction of travel. The heavier, neutrally-charged dust tail is pushed more gently by sunlight's radiation pressure and lags behind the comet's orbital path, producing its characteristic curved shape.