PanSTARRS over Parkes
9.03.2013

Sweeping quickly through southern skies on March 5, Comet PanSTARRS (C/2011 L4) follows the Sun toward the western horizon in this twilight scene. In the foreground is Australia's CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope, a 64 meter wide steerable dish that is no stranger to the space age exploration of comets.

NEOWISE of the North
17.07.2020

After local midnight on July 14 comet NEOWISE was still above the horizon for Goldenrod, Alberta, Canada, just north of Calgary, planet Earth. In this snapshot it makes for an awesome night with dancing displays of the northern lights. The long-tailed comet and auroral displays are beautiful apparitions in the north these days.

SOHOs Twin Sungrazers
11.06.1998

This four frame animation (courtesy D. Biesecker) shows two comets arcing toward a fatal fiery encounter with the Sun. These discovery images were recorded by the LASCO instrument on board the space-based SOHO solar observatory on June 1-2.

Encke and the Tadpoles
27.10.2023

History's second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke's orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury.

Orionids Meteor Shower to Peak Tonight
21.10.1996

Tonight you might be able to see Halley's Comet again - or at least some pieces of it. It is widely thought that that the meteors from the Orionids meteor shower, which peaks tonight, are just small pieces of Halley's Comet falling to Earth.

Pacman and Hartley
7.10.2010

Touring the solar system with a 6 year orbital period, small comet Hartley 2 (103/P Hartley) will make its closest approach to planet Earth on October 20 and its closest approach to the Sun on October 28. It may become a naked-eye comet, just visible in clear, dark skies.

Sungrazer
22.03.2009

The Sun destroyed this comet. Arcing toward a fiery fate, this Sungrazer comet was recorded by the SOHO spacecraft's Large Angle Spectrometric COronagraph(LASCO) on 1996 Dec. 23. LASCO uses an occulting disk...

Sungrazer
27.10.2013

Arcing toward a fiery fate, this Sungrazer comet was recorded by the SOHO spacecraft's Large Angle Spectrometric COronagraph(LASCO) on December 23, 1996. LASCO uses an occulting disk, partially visible at the lower...

The View Toward M101
21.01.2016

Sweeping through northern skies, Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) made its closest approach on January 17, passing about 6 light-minutes from our fair planet. Dust and ion tails clearly separated in this Earth-based view, the comet is also posed for a Messier moment, near the line-of-sight to M101, grand spiral galaxy in Ursa Major.

Water Found Around Nearby Star CW Leonis
16.07.2001

Do worlds outside our Solar System have oceans of water like Earth? An indication that such worlds might exist was bolstered recently by new evidence that nearby star system CW Leonis harbors water. Recent observations with the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) found significant detections of light at specific colors emitted by water.