Comets

Turkish astrophotographers in the northern city of Kastamonu are on the watch to capture a rare celestial event — Comet C/2023 A3 — visible to the naked eye for the first time in 80,000 years.

The comet, discovered last year, has been eagerly awaited by skywatchers and is now gracing the Turkish skies, offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for stargazers.

The comet is over 128.7 kilometers in diameter & has a mass of ~500 trillion tons. It won’t hit us but it will help us understand the Oort Cloud

Sixty-six million years ago, a huge celestial object struck off the coast of what is now Mexico, triggering a catastrophic "impact winter" that eventually wiped out three-quarters of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

A pair of astronomers at Harvard say they have now resolved long-standing mysteries surrounding the nature and origin of the "Chicxulub impactor."

Astronomers say they have detected a telltale trace of water on comet 2I/Borisov, the first known interstellar comet, New Scientist reported. If this is confirmed, this will be the first time water from another planetary system has been detected inside our solar system.

The Hubble space telescope has unravelled the mystery of a strange asteroid which had also been classified as a comet – and which had puzzled astronomers.

Hubble was used to image the asteroid, designated 2006 VW139, in September 2016 – and the image revealed that it’s not one, but two asteroids.

A comet streaking through space with a European robot lab riding piggyback will skirt the Sun this week, setting another landmark in an extraordinary quest to unravel the origins of life on Earth.