COBS News archive

Rosetta's Target Comet is Becoming Active
May 17, 2014
The target of ESA's Rosetta mission has started to reveal its true personality as a comet, its dusty veil clearly developing over the past six weeks.

Rosetta space probe: Landing on a comet to observe nucleus and environment
May 12, 2014
In March 2004, the Rosetta orbiter was launched into space to analyse and observe the nucleus and environment of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Little research has been done on comets and they still hold many secrets. One theory is that comets brought water (and thus possibly even life) to Earth. Although space probes have been able to carry out isolated investigations, this has only been while the comets were flying past. At least until now. This will be the first probe not only to collect measurement data "en passant" as it were, but to accompany the comet -- and even to land on it.

A New Meteor Shower in May?
May 06, 2014
The head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, Dr. Bill Cooke, often lets cameras do his sky watching for him. He and his colleagues operate a nationwide network of automated fireball observatories that capture anything that burns into Earth’s atmosphere.

Comet 209P/LINEAR & its Meteor Shower
April 19, 2014
209P/LINEAR is a periodic comet discovered by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey on five images taken on 2004, February 3.40 (discovery magnitude ~18.1). Reported by LINEAR as an apparent asteroidal object, it has been found to show a narrow 1'.1 tail in p.a. 274 deg (slightly expanding toward the end) on CCD images obtained by R. H. McNaught with the 1.0-m f/8 reflector at Siding Spring on Mar. 30.8 UT.

New Comet: C/2014 F1 (HILL)
April 02, 2014
Cbet nr. 3840, issued on 2014, April 01, announces the discovery of a comet (~ magnitude 18.6) on CCD images taken on 2014, March 29.4 by R. E. Hill with the Catalina Sky Survey's 0.68-m Schmidt telescope. The new comet has been designated C/2014 F1 (HILL).

Rosetta Sets Sights on Destination Comet
March 31, 2014
The Rosetta spacecraft has caught a first glimpse of its destination comet since waking up from deep-space hibernation on Jan. 20. The first images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were taken on March 20 and 21 by the Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) wide-angle camera and narrow-angle camera. Rosetta is an international mission spearheaded by the European Space Agency with support and instruments provided by NASA.

Hubble Sees Mars-Bound Comet Sprout Multiple Jets
March 27, 2014
Comet Siding Spring is plunging toward the Sun along a roughly 1-million-year orbit. The comet, discovered in 2013, was within the radius of Jupiter's orbit when the Hubble Space Telescope photographed it on March 11, 2014.

Hubble Witnesses Asteroid's Mysterious Disintegration
March 18, 2014
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recorded the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. Fragile comets, comprised of ice and dust, have been seen falling apart as they approach the sun, but nothing like this has ever before been observed in the asteroid belt.

New Comet: C/2014 E2 (JACQUES)
March 14, 2014
Cbet nr. 3828, issued on 2014, March 14, announces the discovery of a comet on CCD images taken by C. Jacques, E. Pimentel and J. Barros using a 0.45-m f/2.9 reflector at the SONEAR Observatory near Oliveira, Brazil. The new comet has been designated C/2014 E2 (JACQUES).

Rare form of nitrogen detected in comet ISON
March 12, 2014
Astronomers observed the Comet ISON during its bright outburst in the middle of November 2013. Subaru Telescope's High Dispersion Spectrograph has detected two rare forms of nitrogen in the comet ISON. Their results support the hypothesis that there were two distinct reservoirs of nitrogen the massive, dense cloud ("solar nebula") from which our Solar System may have formed and evolved.

A good year to find a Comet
February 13, 2014
A team of European astronomers has found a previously unknown comet, detected as a tiny blob of light orbiting our Sun deep in the Solar System.

NASA Preparing for 2014 Comet Watch at Mars
January 31, 2014
This spring, NASA will be paying cautious attention to a comet that could put on a barnstorming show at Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. On that date, comet 2013 A1 Siding Spring will buzz Mars about 10 times closer than any identified comet has ever flown past Earth.

NASA Instruments on European Comet Spacecraft Begin Countdown
January 25, 2014
Three NASA science instruments are being prepared for check-out operations aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, which is set to become the first to orbit a comet and land a probe on its nucleus in November.

Rosetta: 'Sleeping Beauty' Wakes Up from Deep Space Hibernation
January 21, 2014
It was a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter in the story of the Rosetta space mission this evening as ESA heard from its distant spacecraft for the first time in 31 months.

Rosetta: To Chase a Comet
January 17, 2014
Comets are among the most beautiful and least understood nomads of the night sky. To date, half a dozen of these most heavenly of heavenly bodies have been visited by spacecraft in an attempt to unlock their secrets. All these missions have had one thing in common: the high-speed flyby. Like two ships passing in the night (or one ship and one icy dirtball), they screamed past each other at hyper velocity -- providing valuable insight, but fleeting glimpses, into the life of a comet. That is, until Rosetta.

'Standing On a Comet': Rosetta Mission Will Contribute to Space Weather Research
January 16, 2014
A comet-bound spacecraft that's been in sleep mode for more than two years is scheduled to wake up on the morning of Jan. 20 -- beginning the home stretch of its decade-long journey to a mile-wide ball of rock, dust and ice.

New Comet: C/2014 A4 (SONEAR)
January 16, 2014
Cbet nr. 3783, issued on 2014, January 16, announces the discovery of an apparently asteroidal object (discovery magnitude ~18.1) by Cristovao Jacques, Eduardo Pimentel, and Joao Ribeiro de Barros on CCD images obtained on Jan. 12.0 UT with a 0.45-m f/2.9 reflector of the Southern Observatory for Near Earth Research (SONEAR) at Oliveira, Brazil.

Comet ISON Is Still Dead
December 21, 2013
On December 18, 2013, the Hubble Space Telescope tried to observe Comet ISON one last time. As many people expected, there is no evidence of Comet ISON in these images.

Fire Vs. Ice: The Science of ISON at Perihelion
December 16, 2013
After a year of observations, scientists waited with bated breath on Nov. 28, 2013, as Comet ISON made its closest approach to the sun, known as perihelion. Would the comet disintegrate in the fierce heat and gravity of the sun? Or survive intact to appear as a bright comet in the pre-dawn sky?

Intricacy of Comet Lovejoy's Tail Captured
December 08, 2013
An international team of astronomers led by Prof. Jin Koda at Stony Brook University used Suprime-Cam, Subaru Telescope's wide-field, prime-focus camera, to capture an image of the intricate flow of Comet Lovejoy's (C/2013 R1) ion tail.