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NASA sends spacecraft on mission to comet Hartley 2 NASA/JPL NEWS RELEASE Posted: December 15, 2007 NASA has approved the retargeting of the Epoxi mission for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Oct. 11, 2010. Hartley 2 was chosen as Epoxi's destination after the initial target, comet Boethin, could not be found. Scientists theorize comet Boethin may have broken up into pieces too small for detection. The Epoxi mission melds two compelling science investigations -- the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization and the Deep Impact Extended Investigation. Both investigations will be performed using the Deep Impact spacecraft. In addition...

A greenish comet named 103P/Hartley 2 flew within 11 million miles of the Earth on Wednesday, one of the closest approaches by a comet in centuries. But hardly anyone is likely to see it until a Maryland-led NASA mission sends a spacecraft past on Nov. 4. While the comet has been visible in the northern sky for weeks, it has been a difficult target for backyard stargazers, especially in light-polluted suburban skies. "This is probably one of the best comets of the year," said Armen Caroglanian, a member of an employees' astronomy club at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center....

A pale green interloper among the stars of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 glows like an escapee from Krypton at the center of this exposure taken on the night of Sept. 28, 2010, by NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. Still too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, the comet was 18 million miles away from Earth at the time. Cooke took this image using a telescope located near Mayhill, N.M., which he controlled via the Internet from his home computer. "Before mid-October, Northern Hemisphere observers will be able to see the comet nearly all night long in the northeast," Cook...

BIG GREEN COMET: The icy nucleus of comet 103P/Hartley 2 measures no more than a couple of kilometers across. That tiny nugget, however, is surrounded by an vast atmosphere of gas more than 150,000 km in diameter--about the same size as the planet Jupiter! And it's coming our way. Amateur astronomer Nick Howes sends this picture of the approaching comet from Cherhill, WIltshire UK: "I photographed the comet on Oct. 1st using a 4-inch refractor," says Howes. "Four hours of exposure time revealed not only the comet's vast green atmosphere but also an emerging tail." Howes describes the processing of...