Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether so that their meteor showers are hard to detect. From a new meteor shower survey ...
Space Exploration
May 20, 2021
0
775
A new study by a Belgian team using data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) has shown that iron and nickel exist in the atmospheres of comets throughout our Solar System, even those ...
Astronomy
May 19, 2021
4
765
If asked where meteorites come from, you might reply "from comets." But according to our new research, which tracked hundreds of fireballs on their journey through the Australian skies, you would be wrong.
Space Exploration
May 14, 2021
0
506
As anyone who has ever tried to clean a home knows, ridding yourself of dust is a Sisyphean effort. No surface stays free of it for long. It turns out that space is somewhat similar. Space is filled with interplanetary dust, ...
Space Exploration
Apr 29, 2021
8
124
Looking to do some springtime astronomy? With temperatures warming up in the northern hemisphere in April through May, galaxy season is upon us. At dusk, the area in the Bowl of Virgo asterism rising in the east is rife with ...
Space Exploration
Apr 22, 2021
0
35
The world's first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of phyllosilicate; on Earth ...
Space Exploration
Apr 06, 2021
3
355
New observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) indicate that the rogue comet 2I/Borisov, which is only the second and most recently detected interstellar visitor to our Solar System, ...
Astronomy
Mar 30, 2021
1
4819
In early 2016, an icy visitor from the edge of our solar system hurtled past Earth. It briefly became visible to stargazers as Comet Catalina before it slingshotted past the Sun to disappear forevermore out of the solar system.
Planetary Sciences
Mar 05, 2021
0
875
After traveling several billion miles toward the Sun, a wayward young comet-like object orbiting among the giant planets has found a temporary parking place along the way. The object has settled near a family of captured ...
Space Exploration
Feb 25, 2021
0
1766
From aboard the Juno spacecraft, a Southwest Research Institute-led instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter's clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the ...
Planetary Sciences
Feb 22, 2021
1
53
A comet is a Small Solar System Body that orbits the Sun. When close enough to the Sun, a comet exhibits a visible coma (fuzzy "atmosphere"), and sometimes a tail, both because of the effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus. Comet nuclei are themselves loose collections of ice, dust and small rocky particles, ranging from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers across.
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