Comets

Astrophotographer Miguel Claro captured a panoramic view of the Milky Way, a comet and other night sky sights from a dark sky preserve in Portugal. Watch it in virtual reality.

Forty years ago this month, there came a show stopping celestial sight — literally a bolt out of the blue — as a new comet was discovered close to Earth.

An unusual green meteor recently exploded as it plummeted through the sky over Australia, giving off a brilliant flash of light that could be seen for miles.

A comet recently discovered zooming through our solar system has the potential to be quite bright when it arrives late in 2024, but comets have let us down before.

The newly discovered comet C/2023 A3 is making a close approach around the sun for the first time in 80,000 years, and might be as bright as a star in fall 2024.

The comet C/2022 A2 (Pan-STARRS) will reach perihelion, or the closest point to the sun in its orbit, on Saturday, Feb. 18. The comet will be visible from Earth at dawn and dusk.

Green comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has been predicted to have a period of 50,000 years, but there’s a chance it’s racing out of the solar system.

The massive comet 96P Machholz is currently headed through the inner solar system, and a closer look at this unusual 4-mile-wide space snowball reveals that it's chasing its own tail.

A rare green comet that hasn't been seen since the time of the Neaderthals made its closest approach to Earth on Feb. 1, and astrophotographers all over the world couldn't peel their eyes off it.