Dec 9, 2024 · Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a comet’s orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets.

Oct 11, 2024 · The comet hails from the Oort Cloud, which scientists think is a giant spherical shell surrounding our solar system. It is like a big, thick-walled bubble made of icy pieces of space debris the sizes of mountains and sometimes larger.

Jan 22, 2025 · Asteroid and Comet Resources. Explore this page for a curated collection of resources, including activities that can be done at home, as well as videos and animations, images, handouts, and online interactives. This resource package is suitable for educators, students, and anyone interested in learning more about asteroids and comets! Learn More

Jan 16, 2025 · NASA/Don Pettit. A comet that hasn’t been in the inner solar system for around 180,000 years and is not likely to be seen again for 600,000 years, is suddenly visible after sunset—but only if...

Jan 14, 2025 · A comet has two tails that get longer the closer it gets to the Sun. Both tails are always directed away from the Sun. The ion tail (blue) always points directly away from the Sun, while the dust tail (yellow) points away from the Sun in a …

Jul 25, 2024 · A comet warms up as it nears the Sun and develops an atmosphere, or coma. The Sun’s heat causes the comet’s ices to change to gases so the coma gets larger. The coma may extend hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, this comet ATLAS is setting in the southern hemisphere twilight and was clearly visible to the unaided eye.

On June 15, 2020, a citizen scientist spotted a never-before-seen comet in data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO — the 4,000th comet discovery in the spacecraft’s 25-year history.

CONTOUR - NASA Mission to fly by three comet nuclei (2002) Genesis - NASA Discovery Solar Wind Sample Return Mission (2001) Stardust - NASA Discovery Mission to collect samples from Comet P/Wild 2 (1999) Deep Space 1 - NASA Flyby Mission to comet Borrelly and asteroid Braille (1998) Galileo - NASA Mission to Jupiter, imaged Comet Shoemaker-Levy ...

Jun 7, 2000 · When a comet approaches within a few Astronomical Units (1 AU equals approximately 150 million kilometers) of the Sun, the surface of the nucleus begins to warm, and volatile material on the comet evaporates.