Isoncampaign.org- 10/9/13, Karl

Comet ISON is doing just fine! It continues to behave like a fairly typical, if somewhat smaller-than-average, Oort Cloud comet. It has given no indication that it has fragmented and while such an event can never be ruled out, we see no evidence or hint that the comet is in any imminent danger of doing so. Any reports to the contrary are just speculation.

How can we be so sure? Because we can see the comet! Opposite is just one more recent example of an extremely high-quality image of ISON taken by Nick Howes, Ernesto Guido and Martino Nicolini as part of a series of daily imaging sequences they have been recording to help study the morphology (shape, size, etc) of comet ISON.

Read More

The Watchers, 8/1/13, Adonai

A meteor has reportedly crashed at a dump site in a village of northwest China around 02:00 local time on Thursday, August 1, 2013. Meteorite impact left a 3 meter wide and 2 meter deep crater. 

Authorities reported no casualties. Search for meteorite fragments is ongoing.

Read More

Csmonitor.com, 6/7/13

This was not a tale that should have had a happy ending. When Comet Lovejoy sped into the Sun’s corona in 2011, scientists did not expect the daredevil to survive. Astronomers had already tracked 2,000 similar comets making the same inadvisable trip. None had made it, all melting into the sun’s super-hot glow.

But Lovejoy did live – and it is now telling scientists new tales about our sun.

"It's absolutely astounding," says Karl Battams, of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC, in a press release. "I did not think the comet's icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us."

For more on this story please see Csmonitor.com

EarthSky.org - 6/5/13

Early Earth was not very hospitable when it came to jump starting life. In fact, new research shows that life on Earth may have come from out of this world.

Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a former LLNL postdoc) found that icy comets that crashed into Earth billions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds, including the building blocks of proteins and nucleobases pairs of DNA and RNA.

For more information on this story please see EarthSky.org

Universe Today-3/20/13, Bob King

Wow – what an image! Michael Jaeger’s photo of Comet C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS on March 19 resembles those taken by the orbiting Stereo-B spacecraft. Most  observers using binoculars and telescopes are seeing the comet’s head, bright false nucleus and a single plume-like tail.

Careful photography like Jaeger’s reveals so much more – two bright, broad dust tails and three shorter spikes. One of the dust tails peels off to the left of the comet’s head, the other extends upward feather-like before splitting into two separate streamers. There are also several narrow, spike-like tails due to various excited elements and gas emissions from the comet’s icy nucleus.