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Ill omens, objects of fascination, bringers of life, key to the ancient history of the Solar System. Comets are all of these things. Find out more about these small Solar System bodies.

If the Rosetta mission has got you interested in comets, you can read more about them here: Comets

I've just updated this article - and I'm sure I'll have to do it again before Rosetta's mission is over.

Wow! Here's the latest comet picture from Rosetta. It was taken at just under 100 km (less than fifty miles) from the comet. If you imagine it upside down - or just invert the image - you can see why people are referring to it as a rubber duck. What an strange-looking object!

And here's the amazing story of Rosetta's 10-year journey to meet the comet.

Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy has just discovered his fifth comet. It's still far away, so no one knows how it will develop. The comet Lovejoy discovered in 2011 was a dramatic sungrazer, as the picture taken from space shows.

The comet that Rosetta is visiting doesn't seem very big compared to, say, a moon. And it's not. But someone has shown how big Comet Churymov-Gerasimenko is compared to a city. You sure wouldn't want something that size landing on your city. Or even on your planet!

Comet Siding Spring was discovered last year by Rob McNaught. He has discovered many comets, including a 2007 comet which was spectacular enough to be classified as a Great Comet. However the current discovery isn't named after him, but after the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia where he made the discovery.

This is a photo that takes in the comet, two globular clusters and a galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

The comet is going to come very close to Mars in October and the Mars orbiters are preparing for the encounter.