In Depth | 1P Halley – NASA Solar System Exploration The History of Halley's Comet Until the time of English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742), comets were believed to make only one pass through the solar system But in 1705, Halley used Isaac Newton's theories of gravitation and planetary motions to compute the orbits of several comets
In Depth | Our Solar System – NASA Solar System Exploration The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids Beyond our own solar system, there
In Depth | Kuiper Belt – NASA Solar System Exploration Objects that remain there occasionally collide, producing smaller objects fragmented by the collision, sometimes comets and also dust that's blown out of the solar system by the solar wind Structure and Characteristics The Kuiper Belt represents an enormous, donut-shaped volume of space in the outer solar system
Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud - NASA Solar System Exploration The Kuiper Belt should not be confused with the Oort Cloud, which is a thousand times more distant In 1950, astronomer Jan Oort proposed that certain comets come from a vast, extremely distant spherical shell of icy bodies surrounding the solar system This giant swarm of objects, now named the Oort Cloud, occupies space at a distance between 5,000 and 100,000 astronomical units No objects
RPS 3D Viewer - NASA Solar System Exploration NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system
C 1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) - NASA Solar System Exploration Comet Hale-Bopp (C 1995 O1) was discovered on 23 July 1995 by two independent observers, Alan Hale (Cloudcroft, N M ) and Thomas Bopp (Stanfield, AZ), and is showing potential of putting on a spectacular display as it nears its 1997 perihelion The image above was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and shows material ejected from the rotating comet in a "pinwheel" pattern
In Depth | 21P Giacobini-Zinner – NASA Solar System Exploration Comets are usually named for their discoverer (s) or for the name of the observatory telescope used in the discovery Since both Michel Giacobini and Ernst Zinner discovered and recovered this comet it is named for them The letter "P" indicates that Giacobini-Zinner is a periodic comet Periodic comets have an orbital period of less than 200
In Depth | Perseids – NASA Solar System Exploration When comets come around the Sun, they leave a dusty trail behind them Every year Earth passes through these debris trails, which allows the bits to collide with our atmosphere and disintegrate to create fiery and colorful streaks in the sky