Comets Archives

December 28, 2021December 28, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

The Real Science Behind the Movie “Don’t Look Up”

DON'T LOOK UP (L to R) LEONARDO DICAPRIO as DR. RANDALL MINDY, JENNIFER LAWRENCE as KATE DIBIASKY. Cr. NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX © 2021

The new movie “Don’t Look Up” — now available on Netflix — is not your usual sci-fi disaster film. Instead, it is a biting parody on the general public’s dismissal and indifference to science. While the movie is about a comet on a collision course with Earth, filmmakers originally meant “Don’t Look Up” to be a commentary on climate change denial. But it also is reflective of the current COVID denial and mask/vaccine resistance, as well as our existing political polarization. It also lays bare our preoccupation with social media. While the movie is sometimes funny, it can also be depressing and frustrating.

December 22, 2021December 23, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

This Video of Comet Leonard (with Venus and Mercury) will Blow Your Mind

Comet Leonard seen by two spacecraft: The image at right was captured by NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A spacecraft's SECCHI/HI-2 telescope. Image on left is from the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft. Credit: NASA/ESA.

Since early this year, skywatchers on Earth have been tracking Comet Leonard, a kilometer-wide dirty snowball made of ice, rock and dust. Now, as it heads towards a close encounter with the Sun on January 3, 2022, several spacecraft – with the distinct advantage of having an unobstructed front-row seat to the action – have been keeping an eye on how the comet is changing and evolving as it heats up.

October 14, 2021October 14, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

The Biggest Comet Ever Seen Will get as Close as Saturn in 2031

A graphic comparing the size of Comet 2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) to other solar system objects. Credit and copyright: Will Gater. Used by permission.

A mega-comet – potentially the largest ever discovered – is heading from the Oort Cloud towards our direction. Estimated to be 100–200 kilometers across, the unusual celestial wanderer will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2031. However, the closest it will come to Earth is to the orbit of Saturn.

June 24, 2021June 24, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

A Newly-Discovered (Almost) Dwarf Planet Will Come Surprisingly Close in 2031

It’s good to remember how little we know about the outer solar system. Humans only really began observing it within the past 100 years, and given the constraints on that observations there are still plenty of things we don’t know about. For example, researchers recently found an object almost the size of a dwarf planet that is inbound to the inner solar system, with an estimated orbital period of over 2 million years, more than six the lifetime of the modern human species.

June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Researchers Simulate the Formation of the Oort Cloud

Illustration of the Oort cloud for our solar system. Credit: ESA/AOES Medialab

There is a cloud of debris surrounding our solar system. It’s known as the Oort cloud, and it is the source of most of the comets in our solar system. It was first proposed by Jan Oort, as a way to explain why there were so many long-period comets, and why they can appear from almost any direction. It’s estimated that there are about 100 billion small icy bodies in the Oort cloud, spread throughout a sphere about 50,000 AU from the Sun. Through our studies of comets we’ve learned a great deal about the Oort cloud, but we still don’t fully understand how it came to be.

May 21, 2021May 21, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Comets Have Tails of gas, Dust… and Metal?

In outer space, an object’s location has a huge impact on its temperature. The closer the object is to its star, the hotter it most likely is. Heat then plays a major role in what materials are present in that object’s atmosphere, if it has one. Lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium and much easier to take a gaseous state and create an atmosphere. So it came as a surprise when two different teams found much heavier elements in the atmosphere of comets that were relatively far away from the Sun. And one of those comets happened to be from another solar system.

May 13, 2021May 10, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

A Comet Seen at the end of its Life. It’s covered in talcum powder

Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS in Ursa Major on February 15, 2020. Credit: Hisayoshi Kato.

Astronomers finally managed to observe a comet nearing the end of its life. And they found that it’s covered in talcum powder. They have no idea why.

May 12, 2021May 13, 2021 by Matt Williams

In 1.3 Million Years, a Star Will Come Within 24 Light-Days of the Sun

Artist's impression of an orbiting swarm of dusty comet fragments around Tabby's Star. Could these be responsible for its peculiar dips in brightness or is there a biological reason? A small red dwarf star (above, left) lies near Tabby's. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Within the Milky Way, there are an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars, all of which orbit around the center of our galaxy in a coordinated cosmic dance. As they orbit, stars in the galactic disk (where our Sun is located) periodically shuffle about and get closer to one another. At times, this can have a drastic effect on the star that experience a close encounter, disrupting their systems and causing planets to be ejected.

Knowing when stars will make a close encounter with our Solar System, and how it might shake-up objects within it, is therefore a concern to astronomers. Using data collected by the Gaia Observatory, two researchers with the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) determined that a handful of stars will be making close passes by our Solar System in the future, one of which will stray pretty close!

April 13, 2021April 13, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Earth Gains 5,200 Tons of Dust From Space Every Year

Electron micrograph of a Concordia micrometeorite extracted from Antarctic snow at Dome C. Credit and copyright: Cécile Engrand/Jean Duprat.

Whenever I wipe the dust off my coffee table or catch a glimpse of dust motes floating in sunlight, my spacey mind always wonders, is any of that cosmic dust?

It just might be. But the amount of space dust that lands on our planet every year might surprise you.

April 3, 2021April 2, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Interstellar Comet Borisov is so Pristine, it’s Probably Never Been Close to a Star Before

This image was taken with the FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in late 2019, when comet 2I/Borisov passed near the Sun. Since the comet was travelling at breakneck speed, around 175 000 kilometres per hour, the background stars appeared as streaks of light as the telescope followed the comet’s trajectory. The colours in these streaks give the image some disco flair and are the result of combining observations in different wavelength bands, highlighted by the various colours in this composite image.

By comparing our local Comet Hale-Bopp to the interstellar visitor 2I/Borisov, a team of astronomers have concluded that the interloper is perhaps one of the most pristine comets we’ve ever seen.