Comets - NASA Science
Dec 9, 2024 · Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a comet’s orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets.
NASA Just Captured Stunning Images of a Comet’s Fiery Tail
1 day ago · In mid-January 2025, the ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) watched comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) pass about 8 million miles from the Sun. In this image sequence, captured by SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), the Sun is blocked by a disk (at the bottom), and the white circle shows ...
Asteroids, Comet, and Meteors - Science@NASA
Jan 22, 2025 · Asteroid and Comet Resources. Explore this page for a curated collection of resources, including activities that can be done at home, as well as videos and animations, images, handouts, and online interactives. This resource package is suitable for educators, students, and anyone interested in learning more about asteroids and comets! Learn More
Ancient Comet Makes Appearance - NASA
Oct 11, 2024 · The comet hails from the Oort Cloud, which scientists think is a giant spherical shell surrounding our solar system. It is like a big, thick-walled bubble made of icy pieces of space debris the sizes of mountains and sometimes larger.
Comets: Facts - NASA Science
Jul 25, 2024 · A comet warms up as it nears the Sun and develops an atmosphere, or coma. The Sun’s heat causes the comet’s ices to change to gases so the coma gets larger. The coma may extend hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
What Is a Comet? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids
Jan 14, 2025 · A comet has two tails that get longer the closer it gets to the Sun. Both tails are always directed away from the Sun. The ion tail (blue) always points directly away from the Sun, while the dust tail (yellow) points away from the Sun in a …
APOD: 2025 January 24 - Comet G3 ATLAS: a Tail and a Telescope
A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, this comet ATLAS is setting in the southern hemisphere twilight and was clearly visible to the unaided eye.
4,000th Comet Discovered by ESA & NASA Solar Observatory
On June 15, 2020, a citizen scientist spotted a never-before-seen comet in data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO — the 4,000th comet discovery in the spacecraft’s 25-year history.
Why Comets Are Important - NASA Solar System Exploration
Jun 7, 2000 · When a comet approaches within a few Astronomical Units (1 AU equals approximately 150 million kilometers) of the Sun, the surface of the nucleus begins to warm, and volatile material on the comet evaporates.
Bright Comet’s Tail Dazzles in Images from ESA/NASA SOHO …
From Jan. 11 to 15, 2025, a bright comet surged through images from the ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. Called C/2024 G3 (ATLAS), the comet made its closest pass to the Sun, or perihelion, on Jan. 13, soaring a mere 8 million miles (or 9% of the average Earth-Sun distance) from our star.