A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing.This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail.These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few …

Tempel 1 (official designation: 9P/Tempel) is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.5 years. Tempel 1 was the target of the Deep Impact space mission, which photographed a deliberate high-speed impact upon the comet in 2005. It was re-visited by the Stardust spacecraft on February 14, 2011 and came …

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) In February 2013, Deep Impact observed Comet ISON. The comet remained observable until March 2013. Contact lost and end of mission. On September 3, 2013, a mission update was posted to the EPOXI mission status website, stating "Communication with the spacecraft was lost some time between August 11 and August 14 ...

On September 21, 2012, Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok, using the International Scientific Optical Network of telescopes (ISON), discovered the comet C/2012 S1, known as "Comet ISON". Nonetheless, believers tied it to the Nibiru cataclysm, claiming it would hit Earth on that date, or that it would fragment and pieces of it would hit Earth. [25]

Non-periodic comets are seen only once. They are usually on near-parabolic orbits that will not return to the vicinity of the Sun for thousands of years, if ever.Periodic comets usually have elongated elliptical orbits, and usually return to the vicinity of the Sun after a number of decades.. The official names of non-periodic comets begin with a "C"; the names of periodic comets …

Messenger bestand aus einem 1,27 m × 1,42 m × 1,85 m (= 3,3 m 3) großen Körper und wurde durch einen halbzylindrischen, etwa 2,5 m hohen und 2 m breiten Schutzschild vor Sonneneinwirkung geschützt.Lediglich zwei Solarpaneele an gegenüberliegenden Seiten des Körpers sowie ein 3,6 m langer Magnetometerausleger waren außerhalb des Schutzschildes …

Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) is an Oort cloud comet discovered by Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010, through remote control of the International Scientific Optical Network's robotic observatory near Mayhill in the U.S. state of New Mexico.The discovery was made using the automated asteroids discovery program CoLiTec. At the time of discovery, the …

List of unnumbered Jupiter-Family comets. While Jupiter-family comets are officially defined by 2 < T Jupiter < 3, they can also be loosely defined as any comet with a period of less than 20 years, a relatively low inclination, and an orbit coinciding loosely with that of Jupiter.These comets are often patchily observed, as orbital interactions with the planet often cause comets' orbits to ...

14P/Wolf is a periodic comet in the Solar System.. Max Wolf (Heidelberg, Germany) discovered the comet on September 17, 1884.It was later discovered by, but not credited to, Ralph Copeland (Dun Echt Observatory, Aberdeen, Scotland) on September 23. [citation needed]Previously, the comet had a perihelion of 2.74 AU and an orbital period of 8.84 a; this changed to a perihelion …

The coma is the nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet, formed when the comet passes close to the Sun on its highly elliptical orbit; as the comet warms, parts of it sublimate. This gives a comet a "fuzzy" appearance when viewed in telescopes and distinguishes it from stars.The word coma comes from the Greek "kome" (κόμη), which means "hair" and is the origin …