Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
Technically speaking, Venus has a tail. A fair amount of its atmosphere gets blown off by Solar Wind and CMEs all the time. Some people think that this leads to flu outbreaks, even.

Ok, a visible tail then. Something you can see clearly with at the most an optical telescope, at the least the naked eye.

As for flu outbreaks, that's the first I've heard of this.

But then again, if there really are microbes in Venus' clouds...

[edit - typo]

[edit on 23-3-2006 by Beachcoma]

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
Not all comets have a visible tail, it really depends on the material.

Really? Then how do you categorize anything in space? Gas giants, brown dwarves, comets, KBOs, planetesimals, cometesimals, asteroids, moons, planets... all their boundaries seem very faded and undefined. What's the difference between an Oort Cloud an a Kuiper Belt?

It's like the non-stellar objects are hard to define. At least I'm pretty certain of the difference between a normal pulsar and a magnetar, red giant or red dwarf.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
I'm not too ATS Search savvy.

Neither am I - I do a Google on the ATS domains

Originally posted by Beachcoma
Really? Then how do you categorize anything in space? Gas giants, brown dwarves, comets, KBOs, planetesimals, cometesimals, asteroids, moons, planets... all their boundaries seem very faded and undefined. What's the difference between an Oort Cloud an a Kuiper Belt?

Gas giants are planets that are primarily composed of gas. Examples in our own Solar System include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Several have been found orbiting other stars, as well.

Brown dwarves are simply failed stars. They lacked the mass to create a sustainable fusion reaction. Some people claim that Jupiter is a failed brown dwarf, and that if something happened then it could become our second sun. Despite popular conspiracy theories with horrible science, it just can't happen.

Comets are small icy bodies that come from the Oort Cloud and into the inner Solar System. There are three types: Short period, having an orbit less than 75 years; Long period, having an orbit greater than 75 years; and Open, having no orbit and will eventually escape our Solar System. The comets are nudged from thier homes in the Oort Cloud from collisions with other objects, gravitational waves from other stars, and aliens bent on destroying the Earth. Only kidding about that last part.

KBOs, or Kuiper Belt Objects, are bodies residing in the Kuiper Belt. More on what that means in a moment.

Planetesimals were early bodies that existed during the forming of the Solar System.

Cometesimals are fragments of a comet. For example, the cometesimals of Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter in 1994.

Asteroids are rocky bodies that have been around since the formation of the Solar System. They primarily lie in the region known as the Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter. A fair amount also exist in the Trojan, or Lagrangian, Points of Jupiter's orbit, which lead and trail the planet by 60 degrees.

Moons are natural objects that orbit another body.

Planets are objects that formed with the rest of the Solar System, have a spherical shape, and are located within the inner parts of the Kuiper Belt, which is at about the orbit of Neptune.

The Kuiper Belt is primarily within the plane of the Solar System, give or take a few degrees, and contains many, moonsized and smaller bodies of rock and ice.

The Oort Cloud envelops the Solar System at its very edges. It may stretch out to a distance of nearly a light year from the Sun. It is the home of the majority of the Solar System's comets.

All definitions I cam up with as I typed and how memory served me. If you find something I'm wrong about, please let me know. Hope it helps, though.

Neither am I - I do a Google on the ATS domains

That's what I use as well, and half the time I still end up having trouble finding what I want!

Pluto is infact not a planet, but rather a planetoid.