COBS News archive

C/2011 C1 (McNaught)
April 20, 2011
It seems the past couple of years have seen a bright Comet McNaught and this year is no different. The 58th comet discovery by Rob McNaught and 74th from Siding Spring Observatory, C/2011 C1 was first seen on February 10th of this year.

Frozen Comets Watery Past: Discovery Challenges Paradigm of Comets as Dirty Snowballs Frozen in Time
April 07, 2011
For the first time, scientists have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt the ice that makes up the bulk of their material.

NASAs Venerable Comet Hunter Wraps Up Mission
March 25, 2011
At 33 minutes after 4 p.m. PDT today, NASAs Stardust spacecraft finished its last transmission to Earth. The transmission came on the heels of the venerable spacecrafts final rocket burn, which was designed to provide insight into how much fuel remained aboard after its encounter with comet Tempel 1 in February.

NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet
February 16, 2011
NASAs Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus.

Comet Hunters First Images on the Ground
February 16, 2011
Mission controllers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have begun receiving the first of 72 anticipated images of comet Tempel 1 taken by NASAs Stardust spacecraft.

New bright comet C/2011 C1 (Mcnaught)
February 15, 2011
C/2011 C1 is the 58th comet found by Robert H. McNaught, the most prolific comet discoverer of all time. It was discovered on 2011, Feb. 10.71 with the 0.5-m Uppsala Schmidt telescope + CCD during the course of the Siding Spring Survey (E12).

The Two Faces of Tempel 1
February 15, 2011
Just one year before its Feb. 14 encounter with comet Tempel 1, NASAs Stardust spacecraft performed the largest rocket burn of its extended life. With the spacecraft on the opposite side of the solar system and beyond the orbit of Mars, the comet hunters rockets fired for 22 minutes and 53 seconds, changing the spacecrafts speed by 24 meters per second (54 mph).

NASAs Stardust Spacecraft Completes Comet Flyby
February 15, 2011
Mission controllers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., watched as data downlinked from the Stardust spacecraft indicated it completed its closest approach with comet Tempel 1. An hour after closest approach, the spacecraft turned to point its large, high-gain antenna at Earth.

NASAs Stardust-NExT: Valentines Night Comet Flyby
February 14, 2011
NASAs Stardust-NExT mission spacecraft is within a quarter-million miles (402,336 kilometers) of its quarry, comet Tempel 1, which it will fly by tonight. The spacecraft is cutting the distance with the comet at a rate of about 10.9 kilometers per second (6.77 miles per second or 24,000 mph).

Stardust-NExT: Heading Into the Bonus Round - In Space
February 11, 2011
A bonus round is something one usually associates with the likes of a TV game show, not a pioneering deep space mission.

Stardust Celebrates Twelve Years With Rocket Burn
February 09, 2011
NASAs Stardust spacecraft marked its 12th anniversary in space on Monday, Feb. 7, with a rocket burn to further refine its path toward a Feb. 14 date with a comet.

NASA Stardust Adjusts Flight Path for Comet Meetup
February 02, 2011
Just over two weeks before its flyby of comet Tempel 1, NASAs Stardust spacecraft fired its thrusters to help refine its flight path toward the comet. The Stardust-NExT mission will fly past comet Tempel 1 on Valentines Day (Feb. 14, 2011).

Comet Observing Planner
February 01, 2011
A new Comet Observing Planner tool has been added to the COBS website.

NASAs NEOWISE Completes Scan for Asteroids and Comets
February 01, 2011
NASAs NEOWISE mission has completed its survey of small bodies, asteroids and comets, in our solar system. The missions discoveries of previously unknown objects include 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs). The NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 45 million kilometers (28 million miles) of Earths path around the sun.

NASA Comet Hunter Spots Its Valentine
January 27, 2011
NASAs Stardust spacecraft has downlinked its first images of comet Tempel 1, the target of a flyby planned for Valentines Day, Feb. 14. The images were taken on Jan. 18 and 19 from a distance of 26.3 million kilometers (16.3 million miles), and 25.4 million kilometers (15.8 million miles) respectively. On Feb. 14, Stardust will fly within about 200 kilometers (124 miles) of the comets nucleus.

NASA Spacecraft prepares for Valentins Day Comet rendezvous
January 21, 2011
NASAs Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 11:37 p.m. EST, on Feb. 14. The mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comets surface that occurred following an orbit around the sun.

New comet C/2011 A3 (Gibbs)
January 18, 2011
Comet C/2011 A3 (Gibbs) was discovered on 2011, Jan. 15.51 by Alex Gibbs (during the course of the Catalina Sky Survey) in four 22-sec exposures taken with the 0.68-m Schmidt on Mt.Bigelow.

Sundiving Comet Storm
January 14, 2011
The sun has just experienced a storm—not of explosive flares and hot plasma, but of icy comets.

A Valentines Day Return to Comet Tempel 1
January 13, 2011
On February 14, 2011, NASAs Stardust-NExT (New Exploration of Tempel 1) mission will encounter Comet Tempel 1, providing a unique opportunity to measure the dust properties of two separate comets (Wild 2 and Tempel 1) with the same instrument for accurate data comparison. The encounter will also provide a comparison between two observations of a single comet, Tempel 1, taken before and after a single orbital pass around the sun.

SOHO Spots 2,000th Comet
December 29, 2010
As people on Earth celebrate the holidays and prepare to ring in the New Year, an ESA/NASA spacecraft has quietly reached its own milestone: on December 26, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) discovered its 2000th comet.