He had missed his chance to see Halley's Comet. The beer company and most of the general public think comets appear as balls of fire streaking across the sky, only to vanish in a few brief seconds. They're confusing comets with meteors. Meteors, or shooting stars, are pieces of space rock, metal and dust left in the wake of comets. We see meteors only when they collide with our atmosphere and are heated to white-hot temperatures.
Comets are balls of dirty ice that measure from a few hundred yards to several miles in diameter.
They travel in orbits around the sun much like the planets. Comets appear to hang in the sky, changing position slowly. Comet orbits are usually elliptical or football shaped with closest approach to the sun occurring at one end of the orbit. As comets travel closer to the sun, sunlight melts some of the ice that holds the dusty ball together. In the vacuum of space, these solid ices are turned directly into gases without first becoming liquid.