COBS NEWS Archive
December Comet brings back Rosetta memories
A special visitor is crossing the sky: Comet 46P/Wirtanen, sighted with telescopes and binoculars in recent weeks, is on the way to its closest approach to Earth this weekend, when it might become visible to the naked eye.
See a Passing Comet This Sunday
On Sunday, Dec. 16, the comet known as 46P/Wirtanen will make one of the 10 closest comet flybys of Earth in 70 years, and you may even be able to see it without a telescope.
A hyperactive comet is approaching Earth
Small but hyperactive Comet 46P/Wirtanen is approaching Earth and could soon become visible to the naked eye. On Dec. 16th, the kilometer-wide ball of dirty ice will be less than 11.5 million km away--making it one of the 10 closest-approaching comets of the Space Age. It already looks magnificent through amateur telescopes.
NASA learns more about interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua
The first known interstellar object to visit our solar system -- named 'Oumuamua -- was detected in October 2017 by Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope. But it was too faint for NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to detect when it looked more than two months after the object's closest approach to Earth in early September. That 'non-detection' puts a new limit on how large the strange object can be, astronomers now report.
New Comet C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto)
CBET 4569 (issued on 2018, November 08) and MPEC 2018-V151 (2018, November 11), announce the discovery of a 10th-magnitude comet by Donald E. Machholz (Colfax, CA, U.S.A) and independently by Shigehisa Fujikawa (Kan'onji, Kagawa, Japan) and Masayuki Iwamoto (Awa, Tokushima, Japan).
Comet tails blowing in the solar wind
Combined observations of Comet McNaught -- one of the brightest comets visible from Earth in the past 50 years -- have revealed new insights on the nature of comets and their relationship with the Sun.
Secret shared by comets and sand crabs
Researchers have found a mechanical connection between sand crab burrow widths and widths of cometary pits using a simple granular experiment.
Comet landscape
On 30 September 2016, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft came closer than ever to the target it had studied from afar for more than two years, concluding its mission with a controlled impact onto the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G).
Gaia finds candidates for interstellar ‘Oumuamua’s home
Using data from ESA’s Gaia stellar surveyor, astronomers have identified four stars that are possible places of origin of ‘Oumuamua, an interstellar object spotted during a brief visit to our Solar System in 2017.
Observation Alert: Extremely bright mag 12.2 outburst of Comet 29P
A second outburst of 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann has taken place on 2018 09 23.2 +/-0.1 which has raised its brightness from r mag 13.2 to 12.2. This new outburst occurred 2.6 +/-0.2 days after this first event and its current brightness makes it one of the four most intense outbursts in 8 years.
