Comets

About 70,000 years ago, an interstellar interloper brushed past less than a light-year from us. A new study has found that the effects of this close encounter are still felt today, as the orbits of hundreds of comets and asteroids still bear the star’s gravitational influence.

In 1996, scientists discovered the strangest stone ever found. Nicknamed the Hypatia stone, it was later found to be extraterrestrial, but unlike any known kind of meteorite. A new study has deepened the mystery even further, finding that Hypatia could be interstellar or predate the Solar System.

NASA has ramped up its next phase of space exploration by green lighting further development of two unmanned mission concepts scheduled to launch sometime in the mid-2020s.

NASA has released a gallery of images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing celestial objects contained in the Messier catalog. The collection was compiled by renowned French astronomer Charles Messier to help colleagues differentiate wandering comets from other objects, like nebulae.

​The ESA has some good news and bad news for extraterrestrial enthusiasts. The good news is that a molecule thought to be a biomarker for life has been found in a comet and around a young star. The bad news is that the molecule isn’t the clear indicator of life that it was once believed to be.

Astronomers have discovered a brand new celestial object: an active binary asteroid. Body 288P is the first known hybrid of two rare types of asteroid: a binary that’s made up of two rocks orbiting each other, and an active asteroid that acts more like a comet, leaving a trail of gas.

​A new study using data from ESA's Gaia satellite has tracked the movement of more than 300,000 stars relative to the Sun, and discovered that some will pass close enough to disturb the vast cloud of comets that make up the Oort Cloud.

In August 1977, the Ohio State University Radio Observatory picked up a radio transmission that was so strong it inspired the astronomer who discovered it to write “Wow!” in the margin of the data printout. Almost 40 years later, researchers have solved the mystery.

Around 12,800 years ago, the Earth suddenly dipped into a mini ice age. One of the leading theories is it was triggered by a comet striking the planet, and now, archaeologists believe they’ve found a first-hand account of the story recorded in the remains of an ancient Turkish temple.

Images taken by Rosetta's cameras as Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko passed closest to the Sun in 2015 show that the surface of the comet underwent dramatic changes as the terrain was resculpted by landslides and avalanches, revealing the pristine interior of the body.

​As highlighted by the Chelyabinsk meteor impact of 2013 and frequent fly-bys of asteroids, we need to keep watching the skies for any space rocks that may pose a threat. Teams of astronomers doing that have hit a milestone of 15,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs), and there’s plenty more still to find.

Using statistical computer analysis, astronomers from Western University have reconstructed the orbit of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and say that it's a recent visitor to the inner Solar system from the Kuiper Belt.