Potentially dangerous comets could be spotted many years in advance by following the meteoroid trails they leave near Earth, ...

Comets are among the most exciting celestial objects to watch. These visitors from the outer reaches of the solar system are ...

Tuesday marks the tenth anniversary of a huge astronomical milestone: the first and only time we have landed on a comet. The ...

Stargazers are in for a treat this October as a long period comet will be visible in the night sky this week with the evening of October 15 being the best night to spot it.

Astronomers have developed a new way to trace the paths of potential “city-killer” comets years before they come close to the ...

whose path parallels the comet's. Plus, "streams from long period comets specifically aren't as prone to perturbations from the larger planets," Samantha Hemmelgarn, a graduate student at Northern ...

Any comet with a period longer than 200 years is known as a long-period comet, and these are the hardest to predict. Most long-period comets pose no threat to Earth. They might appear bright in ...

That process produces a tail of debris that becomes visible as a comet. The 20th-century Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, intrigued by the long-period comets, wrote a paper on them in 1950. He noted ...

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is no longer a naked-eye object, but if you have binoculars or a small telescope, it’s still worth finding. This long-period comet from the Oort Cloud — a sphere around ...

I have seen several bright comets, but Tsuchinshan-ATLAS had by far the longest tail I have seen unaided. If you missed seeing it, you will have another chance in about 80,000 years. That makes it one ...