comets – Astronomy Now

A simpler, more mundane explanation for ‘Oumuamua’s strange behaviour

23 March 2023 Astronomy Now

The unusual acceleration of the interstellar body ‘Oumuamua most likely was caused by the outgassing of trapped hydrogen gas, researchers say.

Gemini North captures mesmerising view of Comet NEOWISE’s rotation

25 August 2020 Astronomy Now

Researchers using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii observe a spiralling outflow of gas from Comet NEOWISE, revealing its rotation.

Bouncing boulders and collapsing cliffs on comet 67P

20 September 2019 Astronomy Now

Sifting through images from ESA’s Rosetta mission, researchers are learning more about the properties of comet 67P by studying where boulders fall and cliffs collapse.

A heavenly host of robotic space missions announced

21 June 2019 Astronomy Now

ESA and NASA announce new missions to study a pristine comet, the solar corona and how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s atmosphere.

New study suggests higher cometary contribution to Earth’s oceans

27 May 2019 Astronomy Now

SOFIA observations suggest a class of hyperactive comets contains ice similar to seawater, reinforcing the idea comets contributed to Earth’s oceans.

Comet provides rare chance to study Solar System’s origins

4 April 2018 Astronomy Now

More samples of comets are urgently required to better understand the early history of the Solar System, say researchers analyzing comet dust brought back to Earth by NASA’s Stardust mission in 2006.

Titan drone, comet sampler picked as finalists for NASA mission

20 December 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA has narrowed its choices for a new billion-dollar robotic space mission: A nuclear-powered quadcopter to explore the hazy landscape of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, or a probe to scoop up a piece of a comet and return it to Earth.

Hubble observes the farthest active inbound comet yet seen

4 October 2017 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the farthest active inbound comet ever seen, at a whopping distance of 1.5 billion miles from the Sun. Slightly warmed by the remote Sun, it has already begun to develop an 80,000-mile-wide fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, enveloping a tiny, solid nucleus of frozen gas and dust.

Large, distant comets more common than previously thought

27 July 2017 Astronomy Now

Comets that take more than 200 years to make one revolution around the Sun are notoriously difficult to study, but NASA’s WISE spacecraft, scanning the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, has delivered new insights about these distant wanderers.

Gravitational wave testbed repurposed as comet dust detector

26 April 2017 Stephen Clark

In the final months of Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission, scientists have found an unexpected use for the trailblazing testbed for a future gravitational wave observatory by tracking the tiny dings made by microscopic particles that strike the spacecraft in deep space, exploiting the impacts to learn about the population of dust grains cast off by comets and asteroids across the solar system.