Search results for comets

Space Exploration Sep 8, 2026

A new mission could rendezvous with Halley's Comet in 2061

Halley's Comet captures the imagination in a way that few other astronomical objects do. When it last made its approach toward the sun (admittedly when this author, who is now middle-aged, was 1 year old in 1986), humanity ...

Astronomy Sep 8, 2026

Interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS carries clues from the frozen outskirts of another star system

UK astronomers have uncovered new clues about the origin of 3I/ATLAS—only the third known object from beyond the solar system ever spotted. In a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers ...

Astrobiology Sep 2, 2026

Young sunlike system reveals comets may carry water toward forming planets

Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets—comets in other solar systems—orbiting a young star similar to our sun. The observations point to a possible mechanism for how water might be transported ...

Planetary Sciences Sep 1, 2026

Saturn encounter may have set distant centaur on path to becoming a comet

More than 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, an ancient icy object is slowly awakening. As it drifts inward through the solar system, the frozen body known as Centaur 450P/LONEOS has begun releasing gas ...

Planetary Sciences Sep 1, 2026

Martian astronomy: Percy sees a 'Phobos eclipse' from Mars

What's so special about spotting Phobos crossing in front of the sun? Sure. It's just another image of Phobos crossing the disk of the sun, as seen from the surface of Mars. Like so much of the modern space era, these images, ...

Astronomy Aug 26, 2026

Comet 220P McNaught puts on an encore performance

It has been a busy month for astronomy. In the midst of an eclipse season bookended by the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12 and the deep partial lunar eclipse coming up this week on Aug. 28, an outbound comet hanging high in ...

Astronomy Aug 25, 2026

Naked photobombing comet found in public image

Sometimes images are released before anyone realizes they have been photobombed, meaning something unexpected showed up in the background. A team of researchers found a naked photobombing comet in publicly available archival ...

Environment Aug 24, 2026

The world inches toward catastrophic climate events: 'Bigger shocks are on the way'

In the opening scene of American writer Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future," a heat wave combined with a breakdown of the electrical grid in India kills 20 million people. The devastation causes the world's ...

Astronomy Aug 20, 2026

Interstellar travel IV: Solar, magnetic, & directed-energy sails

Welcome back to our series on interstellar travel! In our first installment, we examined attempts to realize nuclear propulsion and how the technology could be used to reach the nearest star. In our second, we examined how ...

Planetary Sciences Aug 18, 2026

A single asteroid impact may explain the appearance of Mars' moon Deimos

Deimos, the smaller and outermost of Mars' two moons, is roughly oval in shape and has a deep depression at its south pole. Unlike its heavily scarred sister moon, Phobos, Deimos is covered by a loose layer of dust and rubble—a ...

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