Tag: Comets
-
Hubble catches best glimpse yet of interstellar interloper
The comet appears in front of a distant background spiral galaxy (2MASX J10500165-0152029) in this Nov. 19 image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy’s bright central core is smeared in the image because Hubble was tracking the comet. Comet Borisov was approximately 203 million miles from Earth in this exposure. Its tail of ejected…
-
Hubble observes interstellar visitor
This Hubble image, taken on Oct. 12, 2019, is the sharpest view to date of the comet. Hubble reveals a central concentration of dust around the nucleus (which is too small to be seen by Hubble). Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA) The Hubble Space Telescope has returned an image of a comet that…
-
European space mission to get close-up view of new comet
This view of Comet C/2012 S1, or ISON, was captured in November 2013 by the TRAPPIST–South telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla facility in Chile. Comet ISON was a dynamically new comet that likely began its journey to the inner solar system from the Oort Cloud, spherical shell of icy objects located between…
-
That’s no starship … or asteroid: Hubble hints that interstellar object is a comet
News brief: Observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories indicate that the cigar-shaped interstellar object known as ‘Oumuamua got an unexpected boost in speed and a shift in its trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system last year. Scientists surmise that the source of the boost was an outflow of…
-
Planetary scientists suggest that Pluto was put together from a billion comets
These maps, assembled using data from the Ralph spectral imager on NASA’s New Horizons probe, shows the relative concentration of four chemicals on Pluto’s surface. Methane is shown in purple, nitrogen in yellow, carbon monoxide in green, and water ice in blue. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Images) Did Pluto form like its closer-in brethren…
-
Animated GIF shows ‘snow’ on Rosetta’s comet – and sends chills around the world
An image from the Rosetta probe shows the Cliffs of Hathor on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Specks and streaks cover the frame. Some of them are dust particles, others are background stars. The star cluster NGC 2362 is prominent near the upper left edge of the picture. (ESA / Rosetta / MPS / OSIRIS / UPD /…
-
NASA picks a drone for Titan and a return to a comet as prospects for future probes
An artist’s conception shows the sequence leading to the landing of the Dragonfly probe and the deployment of its rotorcraft on Titan. (NASA Illustration) A rotorcraft that could flit around the Saturnian moon Titan and a probe that could bring a sample back from an already-famous comet have emerged as top prospects for a future…
-
Gravitational wave testbed repurposed as comet dust detector
In the final months of Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission, scientists have found an unexpected use for the trailblazing testbed for a future gravitational wave observatory by tracking the tiny dings made by microscopic particles that strike the spacecraft in deep space, exploiting the impacts to learn about the population of dust grains cast off by…
-
Rosetta’s comet shows scars from swing through inner solar system
This series of before-and-after views show the area of the Aswan cliff, which collapsed in July 2015 in conjunction with a strong outburst of gas and dust, seen by Rosetta in the long-range view at center. The same boulder is circled in all images to guide the eye when viewing the scene from different orientations.…
-
Rosetta’s last photos of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Just before settling to a soft crash landing Friday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured close-range images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, peering into a stadium-sized pit and recording a final dataset to keep scientists busy long after the mission’s end. The craft’s OSIRIS science camera took images throughout Rosetta’s descent and sent the data back…