Kepler Detects Transiting Comets Outside Our Solar System
Researchers, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of six exocomets — comets outside our solar system — orbiting a faint star…
Researchers, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of six exocomets — comets outside our solar system — orbiting a faint star…
New research sheds light on how certain types of comets influence the lopsided bombardment of Mercury’s surface by tiny dust particles called micrometeoroids. Mercury, our…
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observed the farthest-discovered active inbound comet, Comet K2. Coming from the distant Oort Cloud, K2 is visiting our inner solar system…
The movements of more than 300,000 stars surveyed by ESA’s Gaia satellite reveal that rare close encounters with our Sun might disturb the cloud of…
Using NEOWISE data from the four-band and three-band cryogenic phases of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, astronomers reveal that large, distant comets are more…
The Rosetta mission has documented remarkable changes on the surface of Comet 67P, revealing growing fractures, collapsing cliffs, rolling boulders, and moving material. Images returned…
A new study suggests that a trip past the sun may have selectively altered the production of one form of water in a comet. Astronomers…
NASA’s NEOWISE mission has discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. An object called…
These newly released images are the last taken by ESA’s Rosetta Spacecraft shortly before its controlled impact into the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. A new image of…
This newly released Hubble image shows comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami. This intriguing new image captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a dust-bathed cluster of fragments…
Using data from the NEOWISE Space Telescope, astronomers have gained new insights into the dust and production rates for difficult-to-observe gases like carbon dioxide and…
Just in time for Halloween, a large space rock that bears an eerie resemblance to a skull will zip past Earth this weekend. Scientists observing…
In a new study, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reveal that between about 0.3 and 3% of the moderately bright NEOs are actually…
Comet Hitchhiker is in Phase I study through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program. Its goal is to use the kinetic energy of comets and…
ESA’s Rosetta Spacecraft views Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko making its closest approach to the Sun, coming within 186 million km of the Sun. In the year that…
A new set of images from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft shows a short-lived outburst from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft…
A newly published study reveals that 18 quasi-circular pits in the northern hemisphere of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s are responsible for its halo of dust and gas….
Rosetta’s continued study of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has revealed an unexpected process at work that causes the rapid breakup of water and carbon dioxide molecules spewing…