comets

The Eta Aquariids will peak May 5-6, with debris from Halley's Comet creating swift meteors, though bright moonlight will make them harder to see.

The10-billion-year old interstellar comet is leaking one of the ingridients for life.

On April 4, comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) plunged toward the Sun — flying about twice as far from our star as the Moon is from Earth. Comet watchers held their collective breath, waiting to see whether comet MAPS would survive its sweltering passage by the Sun. The SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft — a joint NASA and ESA […] The post NASA Heliophysics Spacecraft Witness Comet’s Demise…

Understanding how asteroidal and cometary debris evolves and travels through the inner Solar System is critical for predicting impact risks and maintaining the safety of orbital infrastructure. Particles of all sizes and sources pose significant hazards to satellites operating in near-Earth and cislunar space. As such, modeling and analyzing how small asteroidal and cometary particles evolve over…

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Join the club Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards. A rare "sungrazer" comet is about to pass very close to our star and could become visible in daylight — or it could comp…

Comet MAPS is on the verge of an unprecedented encounter with the Sun, and its survival could lead to a once-in-a-lifetime visual spectacle.

As the comet prepares for its perilous perihelion passage, we look at what to expect. We're all wondering the same thing. How bright will Comet C/2026 A1 MAPS get? Will it become a splendid sight like some of its sungrazing siblings of the past or will it fracture and fade? With perihelion less than three weeks away, a definitive answer is lacking, but we can still speculate. First, let's examine…

In late 2025 a mysterious comet flew between the orbits of Earth and Mars and reached a speed of more than 150,000 miles per hour during its closest approach to the sun. The rare interstellar guest to our solar system captured astronomers’ attention, and many trained their observations onto it in a bid to understand what exactly it is, why it is here and where it might be going. Every new piece o…

A comet whizzing through the Solar System has astonished scientists by doing something they had...

Comets inhabit the cold reaches of the Solar System: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Occasionally, one passes through the inner Solar System, but mostly they keep to themselves out there. These dirty snowballs are agglomerations of rock and dust, and frozen volatiles like water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia. They also contain organic materials. But one of comets' key components is cry…

A new study suggests that a second interstellar comet may harbor icy volcanoes, challenging everything we know about comets and their behavior in space.

As a UCF Today articles describes, UCF planetary scientists Dr. Noemí Pinilla-Alonso, Dr. Charles Schambeau, Dr. Dale Cruikshank, and Dr. Carol de Souza-Feliciano (along with several colleagues) have published a paper on the enigmatic outer Solar System object (2060) Chiron using data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Read more about the study and the […] The post Uncovering a Centaur’s Tracks…

Physics Professor Dr. Yan Fernandez and FSI Scientist Dr. Charles Schambeau are part of a team that has just published a paper in Nature Astronomy describing observations and analysis of Comet 29P, a mysterious comet orbiting in the outer Solar System beyond Jupiter. The team used the James Webb Space Telescope for the research. The post UCF Planetary Scientists Study Enigmatic Distant Comet appe…

Nishimura will be roughly 20 million miles from the Sun – more than four times closer than Earth – and pass inside the orbit of Mercury

Scientists track comet which has been in orbit for millions of years in another solar system An international team of scientists led by Armagh Observatory and Planetarium astronomer, Dr Stefano Bagnulo has conducted ground-breaking research on a comet which has been in orbit for millions of years in another solar […]

Studies of a comet from beyond our Solar System have yielded insights into how other star systems may have formed.  Interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, observed using the Hubble Space Telescope, displayed a high amount of carbon ... Read More

A Bright Comet With A Tail Could Adorn Twilight... …Just As The Coronavirus Epidemic Peaks, according to Jamie Carter with Forbes. “Comet Atlas” is getting a tail. Could it be that we’re about to get a bright comet, visible to the naked eye to everyone in the northern hemisphere, just as the coronavirus pandemic reaches its peak? Currently visible through binoculars and telescopes as it travels t…

Meet 2018’s brightest comet Have you heard about comet 46P/Wirtanen? It’s due to pass closest to our sun and Earth in December 2018. Comet Wirtanen is the brightest comet in the night sky now, visible not with the eye alone, but to astronomers with telescopes and binoculars. In December 2018, comet Wirtanen might indeed become visible to the eye, at least from dark locations. Wirtanen’s closest a…

This is a shorty, just posting links to some current events for easy reference: Comet 41P is bright and easily visible in binoculars from dark skies for most of the night from mid-northern latitudes (link). Comet C/2017 E4 Lovejoy – the sixth comet discovered by Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy – is up just before dawn, […]

Unfortunately for some, the green visitor is not an alien coming to greet us but something else, even though it also comes from far, far away. On the 24th of February the comet Lulin will pass within 61 million kilometers of Earth, thus being able to be seen with the naked eye from some locations. This is the first time the comet is visiting the solar system, passing at a distance that is about 4…