Info from NASA on July 14, 2020: Observers in the Northern Hemisphere are hoping to catch a glimpse of Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) as it zips through the inner solar system before it speeds away into the depths of space. [Editor’s note: many already have!] Discovered on March 27, 2020 by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field…
Category: Comets and Asteroids
NASA’s Solar Probe Spots Comet NEOWISE and its Two (Maybe Three) Tails
As skywatchers around the world (and even above it!) are capturing increasingly beautiful views of the current naked-eye comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was able to grab a picture from a much different vantage point as it traveled beyond the orbit of Mercury on its way toward a July 11 flyby of…
ESA’s Solar Orbiter Will Fly Through the Tail(s) of Comet ATLAS
(News from ESA) ESA’s Solar Orbiter will cross through the tails of Comet ATLAS during the next few days. Although the recently launched spacecraft was not due to be taking science data at this time, mission experts have worked to ensure that the four most relevant instruments will be switched on during the unique encounter.
Are There “Aliens” in our Solar System?
No, I don’t mean little grey men in hard candy-shaped ships, I mean natural objects that have origins from outside of our own Solar System—small worlds that formed around a different star. It’s entirely possible that objects can be ejected from a star system and find their way into orbit around another, or even gravitationally…
The First-Known Interstellar Asteroid is Like a Giant Tumbling Torpedo
Remember that comet-no-wait-asteroid astronomers discovered in October on a high-velocity hyperbolic orbit around the Sun? It has been determined that the object must be of interstellar origin and, based on follow-up observations over the past several weeks, it’s shaped like nothing that’s ever been seen before.
We May Have Just Been Visited By An Interstellar Comet
“This object came from outside our solar system.” — Rob Weryk, postdoctoral researcher at University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy On October 14, 2017, what appears to be a comet (er, make that asteroid…read more below) sped past Earth at a distance of about 15 million miles after swinging around the Sun. It had come…
Just Passing By: the Globe of Earth Imaged by OSIRIS-REx
Here’s our beautiful blue marble as seen by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Sept. 22, 2017 from a distance of 106,000 miles (170,000 km). It had just completed a gravity-assist flyby of Earth—a little 19,000 mph “once around the block” that gave the spacecraft an 8,500-mile-an-hour speed boost necessary to adjust its course toward Bennu, the…
NASA Gets WISE to Long-Period Comets
Comets are the icy remnants left over from the formation of the Solar System. They circle the Sun in highly elliptical orbits that can range in length from several years to several million years, depending on their origin, and while they are usually quiet and dark when they get close enough to the Sun they…
Asteroid 2014 JO25 Gets Some Sweet Radar Love
This is our best look yet at asteroid 2014 JO25, which made its closest pass by Earth for at least the next 500 years on April 19, 2017. The animation above is composed of radar observations made from NASA’s Goldstone facility in California when the asteroid was between 1.53 and 1.61 million miles away. These…
Worried About Asteroid 2014 JO25? Don’t Be.
SPACE NEWS FLASH: On Wednesday, April 19, the asteroid 2014 JO25 will pass by Earth, coming as close as about 1.1 million miles at 12:24 UTC (8:24 a.m. EDT / 5:24 a.m. PDT). Yes, this asteroid is fairly large—just under half a mile across—and is traveling very fast—about 21 miles a second— BUT even so it…
So No New Earth Trojans, But OSIRIS-REx’s MapCam Surpassed Expectations
Remember when I mentioned that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was going to be scanning for “Trojan” asteroids at Earth-Sun L4? Well the results are in and survey says: no new Trojans (besides 2010 TK7, which we already knew about.) But the search wasn’t in vain—it gave mission scientists a chance put the spacecraft’s OCAMS instruments to the test and they passed with flying…
Rolling Boulders on a Comet
See that big rock there? (It’s easy because there’s a big yellow arrow pointing to it.) That’s a 100-foot/30-meter wide boulder that was imaged sitting on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by ESA’s Rosetta on May 2, 2015. Nine months later Rosetta captured another image of the same area in which that huge stone had…
Lights in the Dark 