Comet tagged posts

Comets that have hit Earth have been a mixed bag. Early in Earth’s history, during the solar system’s chaotic beginning, they were likely the source of our planet’s water, ultimately making up about 0.02% of the planet’s mass. (Mars and Venus received a similar fraction.)

Comets brought complex organic molecules and the biosphere, but later posed a threat to the same in cometary collisions...

At the heart of planets, extreme states are to be found: temperatures of thousands of degrees, pressures a million times greater than atmospheric pressure. They can therefore only be explored directly to a limited extent — which is why the expert community is trying to use sophisticated experiments to recreate equivalent extreme conditions...

As Chile and Argentina witnessed the total solar eclipse on Dec. 14, 2020, unbeknownst to skywatchers, a little tiny speck was flying past the Sun — a recently discovered comet.

This comet was first spotted in satellite data by Thai amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod on the NASA-funded Sung...

An atmospheric light show previously relegated to planets and Jupiter moons is found on comet using data from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. Data from NASA instruments aboard the ESA (European Space Agency) Rosetta mission have helped reveal that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own far-ultraviolet aurora. It is the first time such electromagnetic emissions in the far-ultraviolet have been documented on a celestial object other than a planet or moon. A paper on the findings was released today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

On Earth, aurora (also known as the northern or southern light...