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Home / News / Tags / comets
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Last month, a NASA spacecraft and its accompanying spent rocket stage slammed into the surface of the Moon's south pole, in the Cabeus crater. A few weeks later, as everyone was teeming with anticipation, the much-awaited announcement finally came – water existed on the Earth's satellite. Spectrograph... |
20 November 2009
05:27 GMT |
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The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft Rosetta is currently en route to meet up with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the fringes of the solar system. The two are scheduled to first see each other in 2014. The probe was launched back in 2004, and it has completed about 4,500 million kilometers of its 7,... |
14 November 2009
02:26 GMT |
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Shortly after the planets inside our own solar system were formed, they began wobbling about, and roaming around, far from being caught in the well-defined orbits we see today. This chaotic motion is mainly responsible for the formation of the Moon, after Earth collided with a Mars-sized object that was circling the ... |
6 November 2009
14:51 GMT |
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Gathering and studying cometary dust is arguably one of the most difficult enterprises today, as the technology to do so is still some years away. But, in 2003, the proverbial mountain came to the scientists, in the form of an Earth-crossing comet that left behind a trail of material that got experts excited. High-fl... |
3 November 2009
05:09 GMT |
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People in central and eastern Asia will be very lucky this year, as the most wonderful sight of the renowned Leonid meteor shower will be observable form their region. Astronomers predict that as many as a few hundred balls of fire will become visible for brief periods during several hours. According to experts, the ... |
2 November 2009
02:07 GMT |
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Last Thursday, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta space probe managed to perform one of the most successful trajectory correction maneuvers (TCM), according to officials at the agency. The spacecraft's gravity-assist maneuver was very close to projections, and it is now well on its way to meeting up ... |
28 October 2009
15:51 GMT |
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On November 13, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta comet chaser will swing by our planet for the last time, before it begins the final segment of its ten-year journey to the outer reaches of the solar system. During its approach, it will provide astronomers with new data on the Earth-Moon system, before f... |
21 October 2009
06:11 GMT |
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Many geologists and biologists believe that a huge comet impact devastated North America some 13,000 years ago, killing off many species of land animals, and completely destroying the Clovis culture. While this idea has been debated in the scientific community for a very long time, it would appear that its critics we... |
13 October 2009
03:28 GMT |
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In October 2007, as sky-watchers tracked the comet 17P/Holmes, they noticed that the celestial body increased considerably in brightness, by about a million times within a single day. This unusual occurrence prompted astronomers to start monitoring the body. Researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles ... |
16 September 2009
02:33 GMT |
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Between 1949 and 1961, the comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu was considered to be a moon of Jupiter. The large gas giant captured the celestial body in an irregular orbit around it, and its influence only became dim enough to let the comet escape after about 12 years of “captivity.” Dr. David Asher will presen... |
14 September 2009
05:48 GMT |
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Over the past years, a significant portion of the international astronomical community has come to the conclusion that life on our planet must have originally come from comets. Of course, it is not talking about bacteria or other types of microorganisms, but about the chemicals that were needed for the initial reacti... |
18 August 2009
18:01 GMT |
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The area of our solar system between Mars and Jupiter is known for its many asteroids, and for harboring some of the most peculiar planetary formations, such as the dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta, all targets of NASA's New Dawn mission. However, back in 1996, astronomers observed a very weird object i... |
5 August 2009
06:29 GMT |
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According to a new scientific study by experts at the Cardiff University, it may be that comets contain vast oceans of liquid water in their cores in the first million years of their existence. Additionally, the watery environment and the vast amounts of organic material already discovered in such a formation that cr... |
1 August 2009
05:01 GMT |
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On July 19th, while looking through his amateur telescope at Venus, astronomer Frank Melillo, from Holtsville, NY, caught sight of what appeared to be a bright spot on the surface of the planet. The bright phenomenon suddenly appeared in the atmospheric clouds, and its origin left scientists completely in the dark. E... |
31 July 2009
15:01 GMT |
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According to a new scientific study, previous knowledge of how comets originate in the Kuiper's Belt, the exterior asteroid belt of our solar system, is wrong. The paper reveals that the “pathways” these celestial bodies use to get from their birth grounds in Earth's vicinity are fairly safe for... |
31 July 2009
04:02 GMT |
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The recent collision that scarred the face of Jupiter, and generated a cloud of debris comparable in size to a decent part of our planet, has again prompted astronomers to wonder what are the chances of our corner of the solar system being hit by a rogue object as well. The impact has reminded everyone that we are li... |
28 July 2009
10:52 GMT |
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A certain point 580 million kilometers away is these days the rage in astronomical observations. A few days ago, an object impacted the planet Jupiter, as we reported. The event was first discovered by an Australian sky watcher, who telephoned NASA and told them about his observations. The impact, which left the plan... |
25 July 2009
04:33 GMT |
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A new archaeological investigation conducted on the Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Santa Barbara by scientists from the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB) has revealed traces of nanodiamonds, which seem to indicate that a comet struck the location some 12,900 years ago. The team believes that traces... |
22 July 2009
09:48 GMT |
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Exactly 15 years after Jupiter ripped apart and destroyed the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, astronomers have discovered a new dark spot on the surface of the planet, which is comparable to the ones left behind by the former comet, when it slammed into the Jovian atmosphere. NASA made the find with the Jet Propulsion Lab�... |
21 July 2009
01:52 GMT |
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One of the chemicals that can be found in frozen comets wondering through space has puzzled scientists for quite some time now. While this type of comets is usually born at the edges of solar systems, and mostly contains frozen matter, it also contains tiny crystalline silicate particles, which require enormous tempe... |
15 May 2009
14:21 GMT |
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Since the beginning of the human race, people have looked at incoming comets as telltale signs of either a god's will, or an omen of an imminent catastrophe. Rooted in popular culture, the celestial bodies have gained a negative reputation over the years, as being able to destroy all life on Earth. This line of ... |
29 April 2009
14:01 GMT |
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Over the years, we've heard numerous theories and hypotheses as to how the dinosaurs went extinct, and what caused the global event responsible for it. We've been thought to believe a comet or an asteroid is more than capable of wiping out all life on Earth, but a new research seems to contradict that. That... |
18 February 2009
07:01 GMT |
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St Jacob, Illinois-based astronomer Gary Kronk announced that, sometime at the end of next month, most likely around the 24th of February, a new comet, Luluin, will visit our solar system. This may very well be the first time it reaches us, experts say, and it will pass fairly close to our planet, at a distance of ab... |
30 January 2009
13:01 GMT |
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The 4.6-billion-year history of our solar system is nowhere crystal clear, astronomers admit. Instead, it's filled with questions as to the origin of some of its most remarkable feats. Here is a top 6 of these mysteries, as compiled by New Scientist.When the solar system was first formed, immediately after the p... |
29 January 2009
10:59 GMT |
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The menace of getting struck by an asteroid or a comet has been one of the largest threats that humans have had to live with for countless centuries. Every time people hear that a new celestial body has been discovered, they immediately ask themselves “will it hit us?” This fear comes from the knowledge t... |
7 January 2009
08:55 GMT |
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New research, published recently in the journal Science, seems to point at the fact that saber tooths, mammoths, giant sloths and camels, as well as the Clovis culture, were driven into extinction by a 1,300 year-long cold spell, triggered by numerous comet impacts in 6 states across the northern US and several in so... |
5 January 2009
05:08 GMT |
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From time to time, brief streaks of light may appear, moving rapidly across the night sky and disappearing just as quickly. We generally call these luminous phenomena 'shooting stars'; however, they have nothing in common with stars, except maybe a slight resemblance. In fact, shooting stars are meteoroids ... |
10 April 2008
08:43 GMT |
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A new study involving the origin of the material that composes a comet shows that cometary dust is created in the close proximity of a star during its first stages of life, which is being dissipated towards the outer regions of the solar system as the planetary formation process draws to an end. Material for these ne... |
4 January 2008
06:35 GMT |
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It's called OPRA (Optical Probe for Regolith Analysis) and it will literally dig its way through Martian soil to analyze the layers below the surface in their home. Researchers at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences in partnership with Space Photonics Inc. received a $403,000 grant from NASA, ... |
30 April 2007
06:10 GMT |
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