And there she was. All of our viewers are probably like running outside now to see if they could see it. Wait until I tell you how. Comet Hale-Bopp is truly a once in a lifetime event and that's because of the very nature of these celestial visitors. Comets like Hale-Bopp appear to come from nowhere with tails millions of miles long, glowing gases and dust.
Dirty snowballs is what they are.
There are chunks of ice and interplanetary dust mixed together. We've never detected ices on asteroids. Scientists think asteroids are the rocky remains of large objects that collided in space. They float in an asteroid belt near Mars and Jupiter. Comets, on the other hand, were born on the frigid outskirts of our solar system.