Comet Tails, Comas and Nuclei, Oh My Wallpaper

Comet 67P hurtles through space releasing bits of itself along the way through its tails and coma. (Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team; MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

Comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — Comet CG or Comet 67P for short — streaks through space at 135,000 km/h (38 km/s; 84,000 mph), orbiting around the Sun sometimes further than Mars and sometimes as close as Earth. The ESA's Rosetta spacecraft and its Philae lander gathered data and images on the comet nucleus and beamed it back to Earth. The jets seen materializing off Comet CG are the clearest images of the phenomenon to date and scientists are actively researching to understand how the tails, coma and jets come to be. [Learn more about Comet 67P.]

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