When my colleagues and I set to work on a century-old cosmic mystery, we found an unexpected celestial laboratory in Terzan 5, a dense star cluster currently plunging through our galaxy at breakneck speed.
Markings on a stone pillar at a 12,000-year-old archaeological site in Turkey likely represent the world's oldest solar calendar, created as a memorial to a devastating comet strike, experts suggest.
A pair of astrophysicists from Ciudad Universitaria and Universidad Complutense de Madrid, both in Spain, report evidence that comet A117uUD was put on its current "hyperbolic trajectory" when it passed close to Saturn two ...
Apart from the sun, its planets and their moons, our solar system has vast amounts of space rocks—fragments left over from the formation of the inner planets.
Zdenek Sekanina, an astronomer with La Canada Flintridge in the U.S., reports what he describes as evidence of a possible breakup of comet Tsuchinshan prior to swinging around the sun. Sekanina specializes in comet behavior, ...
Up to 60% of near-Earth objects could be dark comets, mysterious asteroids that orbit the sun in our solar system that likely contain or previously contained ice and could have been one route for delivering water to Earth, ...
Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth's atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a widespread climatic shift that, among ...
A multi-institutional team of planetary scientists has learned more about the early composition of the solar system by studying a meteorite named Northwest Africa 14250. In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, ...
The Eta Aquarid meteor shower, remnants of Halley's comet, peaks this weekend. And with just a waning crescent moon in the sky, it should be visible.
A surprise appearance of a new comet made the April 8 total solar eclipse all the more memorable.
