As comets approach the Sun, they release gas and dust known to astronomers as cometary activity. For comets passing near or inside Earth's orbit, this activity slows over successive orbits. University of Oklahoma astronomer ...
Astronomy
Mar 30, 2022
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Asteroids hold many clues about the formation and evolution of planets and their satellites. Understanding their history can, therefore, reveal much about our solar system. While observations made from a distance using electromagnetic ...
Astronomy
Mar 22, 2022
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When the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft discovered abundant molecular oxygen bursting from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) in 2015, it puzzled scientists. They had never seen a comet emit oxygen, let alone ...
Astronomy
Mar 14, 2022
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Using ground-based and space-based observations, a team of researchers has been monitoring a difficult-to-see comet carefully. It's called Comet 323P/SOHO, and it was discovered over 20 years ago in 1999. But it's difficult ...
Astronomy
Mar 14, 2022
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A team of researchers with the Paris observatory and Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC, has confirmed that comet 2014 UN271 is the largest comet ever observed. They published a paper describing their findings on ...
The rapid decline of the Hopewell culture about 1,500 years ago might be explained by falling debris from a near-Earth comet that created a devastating explosion over North America, laying waste to forests and Native American ...
Archaeology
Feb 1, 2022
0
165
For the second time in its mission so far, the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft has flown through the tail of a comet. Predicted in advance by astronomers at University College London, UK, the spacecraft collected a wealth ...
Space Exploration
Jan 26, 2022
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89
Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory evaluate early data the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft sent back to Earth as it observes comet Leonard, a mass of space dust, rock and ice just over half a mile across (1 ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 28, 2021
0
112
When Comet Leonard, a mass of space dust, rock and ice about a half-mile (1 kilometer) wide, makes its closest pass of the Sun on Jan. 3, 2022, it will be a journey 40,000 years in the making. Ahead of its close pass, two ...
Space Exploration
Dec 21, 2021
0
990
Every so often, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud throw galactic snowballs made up of ice, dust and rocks our way: 4.6-billion-year-old leftovers from the formation of the solar system.
Astronomy
Dec 20, 2021
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