Ever looked at a shooting star and wondered what it was? Is it a meteor, a comet or an asteroid? Each year the Earth is bombarded with more than 5,200 tonnes of space dust and tiny objects no ...

Comets are made of a little bit of rock, a few different types of ice ... They are often described as "dirty snowballs," and their shape and composition always remind me of the old, dirty ...

This summer, a mission originally named in Zheng He's honor but now known as Tianwen-2 will propel China deeper into space ...

Some have speculated that the horseshoe-like shape also resembles the Millennium Falcon spaceship in Star Wars. The space rock is about the size as the celebrated Halley's comet and was last ...

The object, similar in shape to a cigar or a pancake, was the size of an asteroid and moved in a somewhat cometlike way but lacked a cometary tail. Unlike comets, which can be several kilometers ...

An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt. A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and ...

puzzling scientists due to its strange shape and trajectory. In fact, the space rock was so mystifying that Harvard professor and theoretical astrophysicist Avi Loeb posited that the comet − ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. When a new comet ...

New bright comet SWAN25F 2025-04-06 UT 2.50 LRGB 16/5/5/5 min 11"/2.2 RASA QHY600 Comets are bodies of rock, dust and ice left over from the formation of our universe. When they pass close to the ...

It doesn't have the name recognition of Halley's Comet, but this enormous snowball zipping through space has fascinated at least one astronomer night after summer night for its shape-shifting tail.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: A comet is a giant rock that hurtles through space. It differs from an asteroid because it gives off what seems like a tail, shedding dust and ice that reflect the light of ...

That outburst caused the coma to distort into a horseshoe or horned shape, with a dark center and bright wings or points. Hence, many media outlets nicknamed it the Devil Comet. (Some also called ...