Cosmic puzzle settled: Comets give us shooting stars

Suspicions that shooting stars come from comet dust, transformed into fiery streaks as they hit Earth's atmosphere, have been bolstered by Europe's Rosetta space mission, scientists reported Monday.

Solar astronomers discover 'shooting stars' on the sun's corona

A team of astronomers from several European institutions led by Northumbria University in Newcastle has discovered "shooting stars" on the sun. Observations from the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter (SolO) have revealed ...

Rare 4000-year comets can cause meteor showers on Earth

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 ...

Moon to spoil meteor show: astronomers

A bright Moon will outshine the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will peak Saturday with only a fifth the usual number of shooting stars visible to Earthlings, astronomers say.

Gravitational telescope creates space invader mirage

(Phys.org)—The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most powerful available to astronomers, but sometimes it too needs a helping hand. This comes in the form of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which makes ...

Image: Hubble's 'smoky' shells

(Phys.org)—Located in a relatively vacant region of space about 4,200 light-years away and difficult to see using an amateur telescope, the lonesome planetary nebula NGC 7354 is often overlooked. However, thanks to this ...

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