NASA’s NEOWISE mission had been on a ‘comet hunting’ mission for the about a year and had a few hits, including Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy).  This image shows Comet Lovejoy, which was about 245 million kilometers from Earth, moving in a (mostly) west and (slightly) southerly direction. The comet’s coma (this is what surrounds the nucleus of a comet) is made up of dust and gases which leads NEOWISE’s wavelength detector to capture the strong signals as seen in the red areas. Comet Lovejoy is expected to be the brightest comet in Earth’s sky for early 2015.

Before its eventual landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, this would have been the closet view that we had seen of a comet. ESA’s Philae lander took this picture of the comet while it was descending towards it, from a distance of just 130 feet (40 meters). This picture was taken using the Rosetta Lander Imaging System (ROLIS) which is mounted on the bottom of Philae. We can clearly see that this comet is covered by dust and debris ranging from fine-grain particles to rocks of varying size. The slight depressions and elevations across the surface of this comet are also discernible from this picture.

In the future, we will hopefully be able to reap many more positive benefits from what was learned and accomplished by this bold mission to land on a comet.

The “dark sides” of celestial bodies are pretty interesting to look at and this is not exception. The ESA’s Rosetta craft took this rare picture of the dark side of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenk which it has been circling for the upcoming rendezvous with its Philae lander. Rosetta’s scientific imaging system (OSIRIS) snapped this picture in September, at a distance of just 19 kilometers from the comet and gives us some indications of surface structures.

November 12, 2014 is just five days away and this is when the historic mission to deploy the European Space Agency’s Philae lander on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will occur. The Rosetta spacecraft has been orbiting and scouting this comet for many months. Rosetta used its on-board OSIRIS narrow-angle camera to take this picture of the comet’s surface from a distance of just 30 kilometers. The circled area is designated “Site J” – the primary landing site for Philae on this distant comet.

The European Space Agency has narrowed down their original ten landing sites for the Rosetta mission on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, down to five final landing sites (A, B, C, I and J). Landing site C was chosen as a backup site for Philae’s planned November 11, 2014 landing over the other potential landing sites because it had a higher level of illumination and fewer boulders.

NASA’s NEOWISE telescope spotted Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring shortly before it is expected to fly by Mars in the fall of this year. In this composite image encompassing four frames, the comet can be seen in multiple positions as it traverses through space relative to the stars in the background.  At the time that these pictures were taken, Comet Siding Spring was approximately 175 million miles (1.88 astronomical units) from the Sun.

This picture of comet Siding Spring also provides a view of the radio galaxy Fornax A (NGC1316) near the upper right corner.

Comet Catalina (C/2013 UQ4) was originally being tracked as an asteroid but later turned out to be a comet. This latest discovery was made earlier this year by Artyom Novichonok (who also helped discover Comet ISON) and Taras Prystavski using a remote telescope in Siding Spring, Australia. Comet Catalina was closest to the Sun (at its perihelion) on July 6, 2014 and was extremely active shortly thereafter. This image was taken by NASA’s asteroid hunting NEOWISE space survey program.

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft photographed Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko/67P from a distance of about 12,000 km using its Onboard Scientific Imaging System (OSIRIS). This image has been enhanced with interpolated data. The Rosetta spacecraft is expected to further study Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko/67P and in an unprecedented event for scientific study,  eventually land on the comet in August 2014. These adn future observations and analysis by Rosetta will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role comets have played.