Find which comets are currently visible in the night sky

Explore a guide to observing comets

Binoculars or telescopes can be used to see vivid tails, glowing comas, and brief bursts of brightness from these celestial objects. For photography, a DSLR or mirrorless camera with a wide-aperture lens, long exposure settings, and accessories such as tripods and star trackers is recommended.

View a gallery of notable comets

The collection features 1973's Kohoutek, which had been dubbed the "comet of the century," 1965's Ikeya-Seki—one of the brightest comets of the millennium—and 2002's NEAT, a comet that survived a coronal mass ejection as it passed near the sun.

Visualize the anatomy of a comet

The solid nucleus holds the frozen molecules, which are heated into a gaseous state once the comet is within three times Earth's distance from the sun. The surrounding coma, from which comets get their name, is a spherical cloud that can grow larger than Jupiter, from which tails develop.

The names of comets can change based on subsequent observations

The International Astronomical Union's coded naming system uses the first letter to indicate a comet's category, which can change over time. "D" represents comets that have been lost or broken up, while "A" applies to former comets that are now asteroids or dwarf planets.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Explore a series of NASA visualizations tracking satellites and space debris

The series illustrates the population of objects orbiting Earth as of February 2024, using data from US Space Command. These include active satellites, defunct spacecraft, rocket bodies and debris fragments larger than roughly 10 centimeters in low Earth orbit.

Comets can be categorized based on their orbital period

Short-period comets orbit around the sun once every 200 years or less and are made up of Jupiter-family (less than 20 years) and Halley-type (between 20 and 200 years) comet subgroups. Long-period comets have orbits greater than 200 years, while exocomets originate in solar systems outside our own.

A real-time 3D-explorer of the solar system

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System allows you to track all kinds of objects in space in real time, from observatories like the James Webb Telescope to all manner of comets and asteroids. Zoom in and out, read up on space missions, and see the solar system from a totally new angle with this incredible interactive site. Jump in here.

NASA monitors potentially hazardous asteroids and comets

Established in 2016, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office characterizes and tracks asteroids and comets passing within 30 million miles of Earth. Over 40,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered, although estimates suggest that about 14,000 more such objects remain to be found.

Halley's comet is named after the astronomer who predicted its next appearance

Edmund Halley realized that historical accounts of a celestial object passing in the night sky in 1531 and 1607 referred to the same object he observed in 1682. By applying Newtonian mechanics to his observational data, he calculated its orbit and accurately predicted its return in 1758.

Dark comets appear to be rocky asteroids but move like comets

Cometary orbits are known to exhibit accelerations independent of gravity that result from forces related to the release of gases. Dark comets exhibit this behavior but lack visible clouds of frozen material that have turned into a gas—the coma the comets display—indicating minor quantities of escaping subsurface ice.

Explore every meteor shower from space

Every year, Earth travels through a series of meteor showers—the Perseids in August, the Lyrids in April—and a fraction of them light up the sky as they hit the atmosphere. Explore each group of meteors with this fascinating, year-round interactive.

The Oort Cloud is a shell of icy objects surrounding the solar system, from which many comets originate

Proposed in 1950 by Jan Oort, the theoretical structure is believed to be the origin of comets with periods of more than 200 years. Leftover planetary building blocks from the early solar system formed the Oort Cloud after being flung out by the gravity of planets like Jupiter.

As of 2025, scientific evidence strongly supports 3I/ATLAS being a comet

Claims of alien technology would require the celestial object to transmit measurable technological signals, which were not detected by the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. Previous telescope observations identified that 3I/ATLAS's chemical composition, structure, and orbital characteristics are consistent with those of an interstellar comet.

Tracking the latest meteorite falls on Earth

Roughly 50 tons of meteorite material arrives on Earth every day, and many of the larger objects survive the hot temperatures of the atmosphere and make landfall. This tracker compiles data from survey sites across the globe to present the latest...

In 1994, fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter

Hubble captured the collisions, which created massive black impact sites visible from space. It represented the first time scientists could prepare for, and observe, an interplanetary collision in real time, allowing them to gather valuable information about Jupiter's atmosphere.

View maps of the Milky Way across all wavelengths of light

By combining imaging from ground- and space-based telescopes designed to capture specific wavelengths of light, phenomena across a range of energies can be observed. If limited to a single frequency range, astronomers would not be aware of some cosmological events, such as those whose visible light is blocked by dust.

The European Space Agency placed a lander on the surface of a comet in 2014

Launched in 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft performed three flybys of Earth and one of Mars as gravitational slingshots to gain the necessary velocity to successfully place the Philae lander module on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Philae achieved a soft landing only after bouncing twice from failed deployments of its anchoring harpoons.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

The ancient Greeks and Romans viewed comets and meteors as divine omens

Both considered the appearance of a comet or its fragments as a precursor to significant events, such as the birth of a notable figure or the death of a ruler. One observed in 44 BCE was believed to be a sign of the deification of Julius Caesar after his assassination.

Explore how far you've traveled through space while living on Earth

Using the "Cosmic Odometer," users can enter their birthday and learn how far they have moved through space due to the combined effects of Earth's rotation around its axis, the planet's orbit around the sun, the solar system's trajectory through the Milky Way, and the galaxy's motion through the universe.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

Check out hurricane history where you live

The NOAA's historical hurricane tracker lets you explore over 150 years of data to see where hurricanes traveled and made landfall. The tool lets you search by location, name, or year; create maps and tables; and read NOAA storm reports.

Visualize your city’s annual daylight map

Type in your town or region and see sunrise and sunset for each day of the year. A separate view shows the number of hours of day versus night for each day. Search a city far north like Oslo, Norway, and compare its graphs to one near the equator (like Singapore).

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

See how much key commodities are trading for in real time

This tracker shows the current price of common commodities such as crude oil, lumber, nickel, and many more, as well as how much these prices have fluctuated over the past day, year, week, and month.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

BirdCast provides real-time data and forecasts of US nocturnal bird migration

The dashboard provides a live feed from March 1 to June 15 and August 1 to November 15 that includes radar-based data on the number of birds, directions, speeds, and altitudes, offering insights into migration patterns, species, and environmental impacts.

View a tracker of the most popular search engines from 1993 to 2021

Before Google dethroned Yahoo! as the most popular search engine in 2002 on its way to dominating the market, significant shares of internet searches were conducted across multiple sites, including MSN, AOL, AskJeeves, and AltaVista.

View an interactive chart of energy conversion efficiencies for various photovoltaics

This National Renewable Energy Laboratory visualization provides maximum confirmed efficiencies for nearly 30 research PV cell technologies from August 1975 to today. Concentrator multi-junction cells have led the field since 1993. (Desktop recommended site.)

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.