What an awesome photo! Italian amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri nailed it earlier today using a remote telescope in New Mexico and wide-field 4-inch (106 mm) refractor. Currently the brightest comet in the sky at magnitude 6.5, C/2014 E2 Jacques has been slowly climbing out of morning twilight into a darker sky over the last two […]

As Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring inches closer to the Red Planet, NASA’s taking steps to protect its fleet of orbiting Mars spacecraft. On October 19, the comet’s icy nucleus will miss the planet by just 82,000 miles (132,000 km). That’s 17 times closer than the closest recorded Earth-approaching comet, Lexell’s Comet in 1770. (...)Read the rest of […]

As Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring inches closer to the Red Planet, NASA’s taking steps to protect its fleet of orbiting Mars spacecraft. On October 19, the comet’s icy nucleus will miss the planet by just 82,000 miles (132,000 km). That’s 17 times closer than the closest recorded Earth-approaching comet, Lexell’s Comet in 1770. (...)Read the rest of […]

NASA's STEREO spacecraft captured imagery of recently discovered Comet Jacques on its nearest approach to the Sun as the object was moving at over 110,000 miles per hour. The comet can be spotted in the pre-dawn hours.

Imagery from the Rosetta mission has been used to create a visualization of periodic comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The probe insert itself into orbit around the comet in the first week of August 2014.

The probe is 125 times smaller than its target, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta will come within 62 miles of the surface in the first week of August 2014.

Rosetta’s “rubber duckie” comet appears to be wearing a collar! New images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from the spacecraft, which is speeding towards an orbit of the comet next month, show that the “neck” region of the nucleus appears to be brighter than the rest. Last week, images from the spacecraft revealed that the comet likely […]

While the Camelopardalid shower only produced a few meteors, the lack of flashy disintegrations showed astronomers something new, a new study reveals: the dust from its parent comet (Comet 209P/Linear) was much more fragile than the usual. The reasons are still being investigated, but one theory is that after a century in space, there wasn’t […]

…and that time is now! ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft is just over a mere two weeks away from its arrival at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (which has recently surprised everyone with its binary “rubber duckie” shape) and the excitement continues to grow — and rightfully so, since after ten years traveling through the Solar System Rosetta is finally going […]

Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck planet Jupiter in July 1994.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe has gotten its best look yet at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, with which it will rendezvous early next month. And the results are surprising, researchers said.

I thought the photos earlier this week were amazing.  This little movie, made of 36 ‘smoothed’ or interpolated images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, takes it to the next level, showing the comet’s complex shape even more clearly as Rosetta nudges ever closer to its target. Some have likened it to a duck, a boot and even a […]