Manhattan-sized comet becomes third confirmed interstellar object

Projected trajectory of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

At 152,000 miles per hour — fast enough to circle Earth six times in one minute — a massive interstellar comet is passing through our solar system, offering astronomers the first good look at a chunk of another star's leftovers.

"This thing is coming in at such an incredible speed that absolutely nothing in the Solar System could have caused this," said astronomer Jonti Horner. — Read the rest

Mecha Comet is a handheld everything machine

The Mecha Comet. Screenshot from official website.

The Mecha Comet is a modular handheld computer, which is to say you can connect different controller bits to the bottom for different purposes: "Snap In, Snap Out, Repeat." There's a joypad controls turn it into a Gameboy-style game machine, a hardware keyboard turns it into a Blackberry-like handheld computer, and a GPIO breakout board promises things both exotic and primitive alive. — Read the rest

A rare green comet will pass the Earth tonight

From Space.com:

On Wednesday (Feb. 1) a comet that has not visited the Earth since the last ice age and the time of the Neanderthals will make its closest approach to our planet, or perigee. 

Excitingly, the comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which last passed through the inner solar system around 50,000 years ago, will be at its brightest during this time and may even be visible to the naked eye under the right conditions.

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Rosetta probe's last images before colliding with comet

Now that's a pretty comet. ESA:

Enjoy this compilation of with the last images taken by Rosetta's high resolution OSIRIS camera during the mission's final hours at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. As it moved closer towards the surface it scanned across an ancient pit and sent back images showing what would become its final resting place.

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Lost space probe finally found on comet


In 2014, the Philae space probe left the Rosetta spacecraft and descended to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Unfortunately, Philae missed its landing due to an anchor mishap, bounced around, and then vanished. On Sunday, just a few weeks before Rosetta's expected crash into the comet and the end of the mission, Cecilia Tubiana of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research was scouring new images of the comet transmitted from Rosetta and noticed the dishwasher-sized probe in a crack. — Read the rest

The Wow! signal may have been a pair of comets

In 1977 radio astronomers at the Big Ear space telescope, searching for signs of extraterrestrial life, came across a signal that wasn't just odd, it was unbelievably strong! The signal, broadcast at at 1420.456 MHz, radiated from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and lasted just seventy-two seconds. — Read the rest