Latest Sungrazing comet Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Comet Pan-STARRS lit up our skies during March, but another comet is on its way that is expected to outshine it. Comet ISON has the potential to become a marvel for astronomers everywhere, possibly even becoming so bright it shines in the daytime. Astronomers from the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) and Lowell Observatory used NASA's Swift satellite to size up Comet ISON and make initial estimates of the comet's water...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online This March sky gazers will be treated to another special celestial event as comet Pan-STARRS C/2011 L4 becomes visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere. According to astronomers from the University of Hawaii, the comet should become visible from about March 7 just above the horizon. In order to see the comet, you will need to find dark skies away from the lights of the city. Scientists say that this comet will have a...

[ Watch the Video: ScienceCasts: Comet of the Century ] redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A comet discovered by Russian astronomers last September could blossom into one of the stargazing highlights of the year, NASA officials announced on Friday. Comet ISON, which was found by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok of Roscosmos and named in honor of their International Scientific Optical Network night-sky survey program, is currently located near Jupiter. For...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Hale-Bopp, Haley’s, McNaught. These are just a few of the more well-known modern comets that have blazed across the night sky in our lifetime. Another comet that has been recently discovered could be added to that list next year when it makes a pass by the Sun in late 2013. The comet, named C/2012 S1 (ISON), is due to come within 1.1 million miles of the Sun on, or around, November 29, 2013. Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok...

[ Watch the Video ] A paper published in the Jan. 20th issue of Science raises an intriguing new possibility for astronomers: unearthing comet corpses in the solar wind.  The new research is based on dramatic images of a comet disintegrating in the sun's atmosphere last July. Comet Lovejoy grabbed headlines in Dec. 2011 when it plunged into the sun's atmosphere and emerged again relatively intact.  But it was not the first comet to graze the sun. Last summer a smaller comet took the...

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- In a paper to be published tomorrow in the journal Science, for the first time ever scientists at the Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL) at the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto, and collaborators at other institutions, have reported observations and analysis of the final death throes of a comet, as it passed across the face of the Sun on July 6, 2011, to vanish in flight. Using...

[ Watch the Video ] Comets are icy and fragile. They spend most of their time orbiting through the dark outskirts of the solar system safe from destructive rays of intense sunlight.  The deepest cold is their natural habitat. Last November amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy discovered a different kind of comet.  The icy fuzzball he spotted in the sky over his backyard observatory in Australia was heading almost directly for the sun.  On Dec. 16th, less than three weeks after he found...

[ Watch the Video ] The recently discovered Comet Lovejoy has been captured in stunning photos and time-lapse video taken from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The comet graced the southern sky after it had unexpectedly survived a close encounter with the Sun. A new time-lapse video sequence was taken by Gabriel Brammer from ESO less than two days ago on 22 December 2011. Gabriel was finishing his shift as support astronomer at the Paranal Observatory when Comet Lovejoy rose over...

[ Watch the Video ] On December 16, an armada of spacecraft witnessed something that many experts thought impossible.  Comet Lovejoy flew through the hot atmosphere of the sun and emerged intact. "It's absolutely astounding," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC.  "I did not think the comet's icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us." The comet's close...

The SOHO spaceborne solar observatory today captured comet Lovejoy in its field of view for the first time, indicating that the icy body is on its final destructive plunge towards the Sun. Announced on 2 December, the newly discovered comet Lovejoy is on a near-collision course with the Sun and is expected to plunge to its fiery fate late on 15 December. At its closest approach, it will pass just 140 000 km above the solar surface. At that distance, the icy comet is not expected to...