Comets/Asteroids

Credit: Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA The first-ever comet from beyond our Solar System has been successfully imaged by the Gemini Observatory in multiple colors. The image of the newly discovered object, denoted C/2019 Q4 (Borisov),…

Research redefines lower limit for planet size habitabilityCredit: (Illustration courtesy of Harvard SEAS) In The Little Prince, the classic novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the titular prince lives on a house-sized asteroid so…

K2-18b, which is eight times the mass of Earth, is now the only planet orbiting a star outside the Solar System, or 'exoplanet', known to have both water and temperatures that could support life. The discovery, published today in…

Credit: International Ocean Discovery Program When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into the planet, the impact set wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it…

Unique experiments at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source shine a light on a new pathway for carbon chemistry to evolve in spaceCredit: ESO/L. Calçada; Berkeley Lab, Florida International University, and University of Hawaii at Manoa …

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/CSA/York University/MDA This animated flyover of each of the four candidate sample collection sites on asteroid Bennu, selected by NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, was produced…

Brookhaven National Lab has finished constructing the 3.2 gigapixel 'digital film' for the world's largest camera for cosmology, physics, and astronomyCredit: Brookhaven National Laboratory UPTON, NY--After 16 years of dedicated planning…

University of Arizona researchers are using the Catalina Sky Survey's near-Earth object telescopes to locate the optical counterparts to gravitational waves triggered by massive mergersCredit: Michael Lundquist The race is…

New telescope network to rapidly follow up on the changing night skyCredit: SOAR / Bruno Quint Supernovae, neutron star mergers, black holes at the center of galaxies, erupting young stars -- these are all examples of objects in the night…

Welcome to the early solar system. Just after the planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, our cosmic neighborhood was a chaotic place. Waves of comets, asteroids and even proto-planets streamed toward the inner solar system,…