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.

Comets - Solar System Wanderers

Wow! It's the blue comet PanSTARRS. It's unusual for a comet to have a tail that is such a stunning shade of blue. The color is is due to carbon monoxide fluorescing in the sunlight. (The glow in the bottom left corner of the image is due to the bright star Gamma Tauri.)

The comet is currently visible in the constellation Taurus about 3 au from the Sun. (1 au = the distance between the Earth and the Sun) It was discovered in September 2016 and will be at its closest approach to the Sun early in May this year.

Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach, Jose J. Chambo
The image is a combination of the data taken from two different telescopes on January 7th.

The grandest comet of the 21st century so far was Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007. (Unfortunately for those of us living in the northern hemisphere, its splendour was reserved for the southern hemisphere.) The coma and tail of the comet are among the wonders in this incredible mosaic with Patagonia (Argentina) in the foreground and a breathtaking dark sky above.

Besides what looks like zilliions of stars, there's the southern Milky Way arcing up from the left. On the righthand side of the picture you can pick out two nebulous (cloudy) bodies. They are two neighboring galaxies - the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Image Credit & Copyright: Miloslav Druckmuller (Brno University of Technology)

Wow! A celestial view with lots of blue - my favorite color - including the blue comet C/2016 R2 PanSTARRS. You can also see lots of blue (and other) stars in this image of the Hyades star cluster in the constellation Taurus. In the lower right is a very bright orange star. That is Aldebaran, the eye of the bull, which is about 65 light years from us. It's much closer than the stars of the Hyades which are around 150 light years away.

Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)