Which of the following has a highly elongated elliptical orbit?

Question

Which of the following has a highly elongated elliptical orbit?

1. A. Asteroid
2. B. Comet (Correct answer)
3. C. Meteorite
4. D. Meteor

Correct Answer

Option B — Comet

Detailed Solution & Explanation

The correct answer is Comet.

Key Points

• Comets have highly elongated (eccentric) elliptical orbits around the Sun.
• A comet is a body of ice, dust and rocky material ('a dirty snowball'); when it approaches the Sun, the ice vaporises and forms a glowing coma and a long tail that always points away from the Sun due to the solar wind.
• Because of their stretched orbits, comets spend most of their time in the far outer solar system and appear only periodically — like Halley's Comet, which returns about every 76 years.

Additional Information

• an asteroid orbits mostly in the fairly circular asteroid belt, a meteoroid/meteor is the streak of light when a particle burns in the atmosphere, and a meteorite is the fragment that reaches the ground — so the body with a highly elongated elliptical orbit is the comet, option (B).