20 August 2021
"Weird" comet ATLAS may be a remnant of an ancient visitor
... Africa were treated to a spectacular sight as a large comet swept within 37 million kilometres (23 million miles) of the...caused by streamers of ejected material that spun up the comet so fast centrifugal forces tore it apart. Alternatively, gases...
20 April 2020
New research shows interstellar visitor 21/Borisov is not your average comet
... understand how chemical compositions and abundances vary with distance from a central star. Knowledge of extrasolar comets is very limited, so comet 2I/Borisov’s arrival was a much welcomed event, especially since its brightness and location in the...
15 May 2020
An unexpected meeting could see Solar Orbiter study Comet ATLAS
...detect ionised atoms and molecules in the gas surrounding the comet as it gets bombarded by charged particles streaming off ... to the Sun) on 31 May, 2020. Hubble Space Telescope image of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) on April 20, 2020. Image via NASA/ ESA/...
19 May 2021
Scientists unexpectedly find heavy metal vapour in comets throughout our Solar System, and beyond
...the iron and nickel atoms found in the atmospheres of these comets. In another remarkable study published today in Nature, a Polish ... nickel in the cold atmosphere of 2I/Borisov; the first alien comet to visit our Solar System. “At first we had a hard...
21 December 2018
Still time to see this years brightest comet
... of about ten kilometres per second (six miles per second). The comet is relatively small in size with an estimated diameter of just 1.2 ...study how gases are released from the nucleus, what the comet’s ices are composed of, and how gas in the coma...
30 November 2020
Researchers discover solid phosphorus in comet 67P
...elements necessary for life may have been delivered to Earth by comets. Launched on 2 March 2004, Rosetta, a space probe ...COSIMA was designed to study the chemical composition of the comet’s dust environment as well as processes that occur in, on,...
