... NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a long-sought population of comets dwelling at the icy fringe of the solar system . The observation, which is the astronomical equivalent to finding the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack, bolsters proof for a primordial comet reservoir just beyond Neptune , currently the farthest planet from the Sun . ... The comet-disk lies just beyond Neptune and might stretch 500 times farther from the Sun than Earth . ... Comet Introduction Kuiper Belt Objects . ...

... Exoplanets . ... Artists impression of the blue exoplanet. ... This exoplanet is located in the constellation of Vulpecula, the fox, a faint pattern inside the Summer Triangle.ТљТљ This planet is a not too distant 63 light years away so has been studied by space-based telescopes.Тљ Data collected from Hubbleт??s Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) when this planet moved behind its star showed that in the shadow of the star the light reflected from HD 189733b reduced into the blue part of the spectrum. ...

... 2015 May 14 . Dwarf Planet, Bright Spot . Image Credit: NASA , JPL-Caltech , UCLA , MPS/DLR/IDA . Explanation: Now at Ceres, Dawn's camera recorded this closer view of the dwarf planet's northern hemisphere and one of its mysterious bright spots on May 4. ... Imaged by Hubble in 2004 and then by Dawn as it approached Ceres in 2015, the bright spot itself is revealed to be made up of smaller spots of reflective material that could be exposed ice glinting in the sunlight. ... About APOD | ...

... Venus, Mercury, and Saturn wandered close together in western evening skies last week. ... In the center is a large but peculiar elliptical galaxy dubbed NGC 1316. ... The globular cluster M22, pictured above, contains over 100,000 stars. ... Stars orbit the center of the cluster, and the cluster orbits the center of our Galaxy. ... The 2MASS Galaxy Sky . ... Venus, the second closest planet to the Sun, is by far the brightest of the three planets gathered in this weekend's western sky at sunset. ...

... Comet Tutorial . ... On July 1, 1993 an image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that clearly shows at least 15 individual fragments in one image frame of the train. ... This made an accurate orbit (or orbits) difficult to determine; however, after numerous observations of the comet, astronmers determined that the comet had passed within 96,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) of the center of Jupiter or 25,000 kilometers (16,000 miles) from the cloud tops during the July 8, 1992, approach. ...

... Its perihelion would occur on April 1, 1997, at which point the comet would be only 0.92 astronomical units from the Sun, just within the orbit of Earth. ... Taken in April 1993, the photo showed the comet over 13 astronomical units from the Sun, well beyond the orbit of Saturn. ... Hale, as in Comet Hale-Bopp, has written a book, Everybody's Comet (available through the ASP Catalog) and coordinated an Internet project, "Hale-Bopp: Live in the American Classroom." ... Anatomy of a comet. ...

... Solar System . ... Sun . ... Comets . ... Some get thrown out of the solar system forever, whereas others end up on yet smaller orbits, visiting the inner solar system fairly frequently - such as comet Halley. ... When a comet moves into the inner solar system, this is heated by the Sun, and the ices turn into gas which forms the head or coma of the comet, which may be hundreds of thousands of kilometres across and visible from Earth. The most striking part of many active comets is the tail . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Bad Astro Store . ... Slacker Astronomy . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... Life Under the Moon . ... Seeing Jupiter's Moons . ... Time Zones and the Spherical Earth . A Companion to the Earth? ... December 19, 1999) . ... Big Moon, Little Moon . ... How Big is the Moon? ... 14, 2000) . ... 2008 Phil Plait. ... Subscribe to the Bad Astronomy Newsletter! Talk about Bad Astronomy on the BA Bulletin Board! ...

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... SUN MOON MERCURY VENUS MARS, JUPITER SATURN . ... Mars . ... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Comet to make close flyby of Red Planet in October 2014 . ... COMETS | ... Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) will make a close approach to Mars in October 2014. ... During the close Mars approach, the comet likely will achieve a total visual magnitude of 0 or brighter, as seen from Mars-based assets. ... Only registered members of Astronomy.com are allowed to comment on this article. ...

... The remote planet Pluto and its moon Charon orbit the Sun at a mean distance of almost 6,000 million kilometres, or nearly fourty times farther out than the Earth. During a recent investigation by an international group of astronomers [1], the best picture ever of Pluto and Charon [2] was secured with the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera at the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). ... The new HST image was taken when Charon was near its maximum elongation from Pluto (0.9 arcseconds). ...

... The European HST Archive has been moved to ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre