NASA's Deep Impact space probe has captured video of a comet which could outshine the moon when it passes through the inner solar system this autumn. <\/p>\n
The three-kilometre-wide comet was discovered by two Russian astronomers last September. <\/p>\n
NASA astronomers have plotted its orbit, and say its likely the object has never visited the inner solar system before. <\/p>\n
That means it's more likely that the comet's surface will produce a bright 'tail' of gas and dust in the radiation from the sun. <\/p>\n
\"If it lives up to expectations, this comet may be one of the brightest in history,\" Raminder Singh Samra of the H R MacMillan Space Centre in Canada said when the comet was first seen. <\/p>\n
Many scientists anticipate a bright future for comet ISON; the spaceborne conglomeration of dust and ice may put on quite a show as it passes through the inner solar system this fall. <\/p>\n
\"This is the fourth comet on which we have performed science observations and the farthest point from Earth from which we've tried to transmit data on a comet,\" said Tim Larson, project manager for the Deep Impact spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. <\/p>\n
\"The distance limits our bandwidth, so it's a little like communicating through a modem after being used to DSL. But we're going to coordinate our science collection and playback so we maximize our return on this potentially spectacular comet.\" <\/p>\n
Long-period comets like ISON are thought to arrive from the solar system's Oort cloud, a giant spherical cloud of icy bodies surrounding our solar system so far away its outer edge is about a third of the way to the nearest star (other than our sun). <\/p>\n
Every once in a while, one of these loose conglomerations of ice, rock, dust and organic compounds is disturbed out of its established orbit in the Oort cloud by a passing star or the combined gravitational effects of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. <\/p>\n
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NASA space probe captures video of comet that could 'outshine the moon'<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA's Deep Impact space probe has captured video of a comet which could outshine the moon when it passes through the inner solar system this autumn. The three-kilometre-wide comet was discovered by two Russian astronomers last September. Continue reading