Comet Elenin is making its closest pass to our earth during the next several months. It supposedly will not be visible to the naked eye becuase of its faintness. The Russian who discovered it, Leonid Elenin, believes its size is 3–4 km in diameter. The comet follows a 9,900 years hyperbolic orbit around our sun, so [...]
Within a few months after discovering a comet through a pair of high powered binoculars, Japanese amateur astronomer,Yuji Hyakutake, discovered Comet Hyakutake, virtually in the same position in the sky. The next day he reported his observations to the National Astronomical Observatory in Japan and within days the findings were confirmed by independent observations. The [...]
Comet Hartley 2 was discovered by Malcolm Hartley. He discovered this comet in 1986 at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Comet Hartley 2 is a small periodic comet with an estimated diameter between 1.2 and 1.6 kilometers. This comet has a peanut type shape to it. It has an orbital period of about 6.46 [...]
Comet Swift–Tuttle was first discovered on July 16, 1862 by Lewis Swift and then again on July 19, 1862 by Horace Parnell Tuttle. The central part of the nucleus of Comet Swift-Tuttle is about 26 kilometers in diameter. It is quite bigger than the comet that supposedly ended the world of the dinosaurs. Then the [...]
In the summer of 1994, professional and amateur astronomers all over the world turned their telescopes to watch as comet Shoemaker- Levy 9 crashed into the mighty planet Jupiter. The comet— which has also been nicknamed “the String of Pearls” because that is what it looked like— was the first celestial object to be directly [...]
Discovered on 23 July 1995, Comet Hale-Bopp was among the most frequently sighted comets during the 20th century. The length of time for which it was visible was unprecedented. Having been visible by the naked eye for 18 months, it broke the record set previously held by the Great Comet of 1811. The comet is [...]
Its brightness, longevity, and relative punctuality have made Halley’s Comet a distinctive marker throughout human history. The peanut-shaped Halley’s Comet has trailed its cosmic dust through the solar system every 76 years for at least since 4.5 billion years. In 240 B.C., Chinese astronomers recorded their sightings of Halley’s Comet in the “Records of the [...]