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    Comet tagged posts

    New Measurement Method promises Spectacular Insights into the Interior of Planets

    October 6, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    High-resolution spectroscopy will enable unique insights into chemistry happening deep inside planets.
    Foto: HZDR / U. Lehmann

    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...

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    Recently discovered Comet seen during 2020 total Solar Eclipse

    December 25, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    (left) The LASCO C2 camera on the ESA/NASA SOHO observatory shows comet C/2020 X3 (SOHO) in the bottom left-hand corner. (right) A composite image of the total solar eclipse on Dec. 14, 2020, based on 65 frames taken by Andreas Möller (Arbeitskreis Meteore e.V.) in Piedras del Aguila, Argentina, and processed by Jay Pasachoff and Roman Vanur.
    Credits: ESA/NASA/SOHO/Andreas Möller (Arbeitskreis Meteore e.V.)/processed by Jay Pasachoff and Roman Vanur/Joy Ng. Eclipse image used with permission.

    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...

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    Comet discovered to have its own Northern Lights

    September 22, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Image acquired by the navigation camera on the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko between Nov. 19 and Dec. 3, 2014. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

    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...

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    Hubble snaps close-up of Celebrity Comet NEOWISE

    August 24, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This ground-based image of comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was taken from the Northern Hemisphere on July 16, 2020. The inset image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 8, 2020, reveals a close-up of the comet after its pass by the Sun. Hubble’s image zeroes in on the comet’s nucleus, which is too small to be seen. It’s estimated to measure no more than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) across. Instead, the image shows a portion of the comet’s coma, the fuzzy glow, which measures about 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) across in this image. Comet NEOWISE won’t pass through the inner solar system for another nearly 7,000 years.
    Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, Q. Zhang (Caltech); ground-based image copyright © 2020 by Zoltan G. Levay, used with permission

    NASA Hubble Space Telescope images ...

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