Halloween comet vaporizes into the sun

The streaking Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) has met a dramatic end, disintegrating as it approached its closest point to the sun this week. 

The "best comet of the year" is finally here

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is expected to be the brightest spectacle of 2024.

Most Near-Earth Objects Could Be 'Dark Comets,' Neither Comets Nor Asteroids

The mysterious objects may be far more common than we thought and may have brought water to Earth.

Space Rock That Fell to Earth Reveals Ancient Traces of Early Solar System

A lot as changed in the 4.5 billion or so years since the Solar System first came together from a disk-shaped cloud of swirling dust and gas.

Life on early Earth could have been seeded by comets, meteorites

A new study aimed at answering the latter question finds that some building blocks didn’t need to have formed on Earth, but could have arrived from space.

Comet Pons-Brooks, the eclipse-day comet, appears to be in outburst

Comet Pons-Brooks visits the inner solar system every 71 years. Its next perihelion (when it’s closest to the sun) will be on April 21, 2024. 

SOHO Observatory Discovers Its 5,000th Comet

The observatory has achieved this milestone over 28 years in space, even though it was never designed to be a comet hunter.

'Devil Comet' is approaching Earth. Here's the date you can see it

  • 1 Nov 2023

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, known as the Devil Comet for its distinctive "horns," is fast approaching. Here

A comet impact 13,000 years ago might have wiped out megafauna

Researchers note a "synchronicity" of geochemical signals suggesting that fragments of a comet struck Earth approximately 13,000 years ago.

Another Bright Comet Is Heading to Earth

An incoming comet, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), recently spotted by telescopes in China and South Africa could be as bright as a planet in the night sky next year, according to astronomers who studied the object.

Green comet approaching Earth for first time in 50,000 years

NASA officials said the icy visitor was first spotted in March 2022 while it was inside the orbit of Jupiter. The icy celestial body - called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), is making its closest approach to Earth on 2 February.

Giant comet found in outer solar system by Dark Energy Survey

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is estimated to be about 1000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times. 

New superhighway system discovered in the Solar System

Researchers have discovered a new superhighway network to travel through the Solar System much faster than was previously possible. They could be used to send spacecraft to the far reaches of our planetary system.

The Solar System has a second plane

Almost all the objects orbiting the sun live in a particular plane. But a recent analysis of long-period comets reveals a second plane and it may be populated with comets.

Comet discovered to have its own northern lights

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own far-ultraviolet aurora, data reveal. It is the first time such electromagnetic emissions in the far-ultraviolet have been documented on an object other than a planet or moon.