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The dark, dusty cometary globule known as CG 4 is spotlighted in this image from the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.
A team co-led by Southwest Research Institute found evidence for hydrothermal or metamorphic activity within the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake, located in the Kuiper Belt.
Detected in 2017 and observable for only a few weeks, the first known interstellar object to pass through the solar system confounded astronomers, sparking speculation it could be a giant snowflake, hydrogen iceberg or piece of a Pluto-like planet – even an alien probe, an idea promoted in a best-selling book.
In Review of Scientific Instruments, researchers have developed a laboratory to simulate comets in space-like conditions. The goal of the Comet Physics Laboratory is to understand the internal structure of comets, as well as how their constituent materials form and react. Many of the lab’s future experiments will involve creating sample comet materials with differing compositions. By testing those materials in the space-like chamber, the researchers can compare each sample to what has been observed on actual comets.
Astronomers calculate that the Oort Cloud may be home to more visiting objects than objects that belong to our solar system.
A galactic visitor entered our solar system last year – interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. When astronomers pointed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward the comet on 15 and 16 December 2019, for the first time they directly observed the chemicals stored inside an object from a planetary system other than our own. This research is published online on 20 April 2020 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) used SDSC’s Comet supercomputer to help model the formation of terrestrial planets such as Mercury, Venus, and Mars in a quest to explore if there are Earth-like planets outside our solar system.
Hubble captured interstellar comet 2I/Borisov streaking past the Sun in a pair of images taken on November 16 and December 9. It is the first confirmed interstellar comet known to have passed through the solar system.
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