Visualizing Comet Nuclei (IMAGE)

University of Maryland

Visualizing Comet Nuclei

Caption

A new study suggests that distant "long-period" comets -- which take more than 200 years to orbit the sun -- are more common than previously thought. This illustration shows how the researchers used data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft to determine the nucleus sizes of several of these distant comets. They subtracted a model of how dust and gas behave in comets in order to obtain the core size.

Credit

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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