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<ul class="summary-list"><li>During the total solar eclipse on April 8, the fiery green "Devil comet" could be visible too.</li><li>This Mount Everest-sized comet orbits our sun every 71 years, and won't return until 2095.</li></ul><p>Eclipse watchers might be in for a two-for-one special on Monday.</p><p>On April 8, the moon will blot out the sun over a significant portion of the US, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/solar-eclipse-map-nasa-where-when-see-path-of-totality-2024-3">plunging cities from Texas to Maine</a> into several minutes of darkness.</p><p>But there will be another exciting astronomical event to keep an eye out for.</p><p>For the first time in 71 years, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, a.k.a the "Mother of Dragons" or "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennium-falcon-comet-heading-toward-earth-seen-with-naked-eye-2023-7">Devil comet</a>," is coming relatively close to the sun. Don't worry, it's not going to collide with Earth.</p><p>This <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-everest-sky-how-to-see-it-12p-pons-brooks-2024-3">unusually large comet</a> is estimated to be as big as Mount Everest, and it gets its nickname "Devil comet" from the horn-shaped outbursts located in its coma — the localized cloud of gas, dust, and ice particles that wraps the comet's solid nucleus in a nebulous envelope.</p><p>During <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-2024-total-solar-eclipse-cool-best-special-nasa-2024-1">the total solar eclipse</a>, when the moon completely eclipses the sun, the skies will darken enough that you may barely be able to see the Devil comet with your naked eye. Or you can whip out a pair of binoculars or a telescope.</p><p>Just remember, it's never safe to look directly at the sun during a solar eclipse without eclipse glasses or through a solar lens filter. The one exception to this rule is during the brief window of totality, which will last a few minutes, and when the skies will darken enough for a chance to spot the Devil comet if the skies are clear enough.</p><h2>When and where to see the Devil comet</h2><div type="image" title="12P/Pons-Brooks comet photographed to show it's horn-shaped outflows." height="432" width="640" msid="109040533" hostid="261"></div><p>To find Pons-Brooks, first look toward the eclipsed sun for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/see-how-nasa-voyager-iconic-jupiter-video-compares-new-photos-2024-2">the planet Jupiter</a>, it will appear as a small bright point of light to the upper left.</p><p>After you've spotted Jupiter, look slightly up and to the right. The comet will be between Jupiter and the sun, but closer to Jupiter.</p><p>In close-up photos, the comet appears as a green streak in the sky due to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-the-green-comet-science-explains-its-glow-2023-1">high levels of dicarbon</a> it contains that emit green light.</p><p>But, if you spot it during totality on Monday, the comet will likely show up as a tiny gray smudge, said Robert Massey, deputy executive director at the Royal Astronomical Society on its website.</p><p>It will be hard to spot so just make sure to enjoy the brief <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-inmates-lawsuit-witness-upcoming-solar-eclipse-2024-4">moments of totality</a>, as well. Time will pass quickly, and there are plenty of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/total-solar-eclipse-rare-phenomena-to-watch-2024-3">other spectacular phenomena</a> to watch for during the event, besides the Devil comet.</p><h2>How bright will the Devil comet be?</h2><div type="image" title="Wide-angle shot of a total solar eclipse over the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile." height="400" width="640" msid="109040534" hostid="261"></div><p>During the eclipse, the Devil comet will still be <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/devil-comet-excites-scientists-as-it-passes-through-solar-system-2023-10">two weeks away</a> from reaching its closest distance to the sun, which is when it would be at its brightest.</p><p>On April 8, it will have an estimated apparent magnitude of about 4.9, which means it will be just at the edge of what the human eye can see, said Geronimo Villanueva, associate director for strategic science of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division.</p><p>But <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-when-to-see-green-comet-mars-together-night-sky-2023-2">comet visibility</a> is difficult to forecast. Comets' brightness depends on how sunlight interacts with their coma. Because a comet's distance from the sun, and its coma, is constantly changing during orbit, so does its brightness.</p><p>Plenty of comets predicted to be dazzling have fizzled out by the time they reached Earth, while others have put on a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-perth-fireworks-comet-strom-2011-5">surprisingly good show</a>. As for the Devil comet, we'll just have to wait and see.</p><p>One benefit of Pons Brooks is that it's cryovolcanic, meaning it tends to erupt fairly frequently. When that happens, the resulting cloud of ice and dust around it expands, making it appear brighter. So an eruption during the total solar eclipse would be a spectacular treat if it happened.</p><div type="image" title="Map that shows the position of 12P/Pons-brooks as it moves across the horizon" height="448" width="850" msid="109040536" hostid="261"></div><p>However, if you don't see the comet on April 8, try again in the days leading up to April 21, when it will be <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-heading-earth-bright-outshine-stars-scientists-c-2023-a32023-3">nearest to the sun and brightest</a>.</p><p>As the days pass, its path across our skies will move closer to Jupiter, eventually passing it and ending up on the planet's left side by April 17.</p>

A rare 'Devil comet' will appear during the 2024 total solar eclipse. Here's how to see the Mt. Everest-sized space rock.

<br /><br /><ul><li>The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) captured a complete comet outburst for the first time using its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).<br /></li><li>The comet, Wirtanen, burnt off nearly one million kilograms of material during the outburst.<br /></li><li>Scientists are yet to determine what causes comets to explode periodically like that.<br /></li></ul>The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was on the hunt for planets outside our solar system but, instead, it found itself a witness to an exploding comet — Wirtanen.<br /><br />The agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) captured the most complete and detailed observation of a naturally-occurring comet outburst to date. The explosion burnt off nearly one million kilograms of matter, according to the astronomers who made the discovery.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="nasasexoplan" msid="72366639" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Comet Wirtanen&amp;#39;s outburst captured by TESS&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

<br />The resulting crater on the comet should be at least 20 meters across, according to a study published in <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab564d">The Astrophysical Journal Letters.</a><br /><br />The comet in question, Wirtanen, is no stranger to Earth. Late last year, the comet flew by Earth at a speed of over 10 kilometers per second. Even though it was a little more than 11.5 million kilometers from the planet, it was the comet’s closest-ever approach.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="nasaexo2" msid="72366683" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;table class=&amp;quot;fileinfotpl-type-information toccolours vevent mw-content-ltr&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;tbody&amp;gt;&amp;lt;tr&amp;gt;&amp;lt;td&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Sequence of radar images of Wirtanen from 15 December 2019 showing apparent rotation of the nucleus in a counter-clockwise direction&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/td&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/tr&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/tbody&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/table&amp;gt;"></div>

<br />But this is the first time that Wirtanen’s trail dust has been detected.<br /><br /><strong>Capturing the explosion<br /></strong><br />Comets normally have a trail of ice and dust behind them as sunlight vaporises their surface. But, from time to time, there’s a spontaneous outburst that temporarily increases the comet’s activity — which is what happened with Wirtanen.<br /><br />According to the data from when Wirtanen visited Earth, a comet’s outburst is divided into two phases — an hour-long flash followed by a gradual increase in brightness for the next eight hours. Once Wirtanen reached its peak brightness, it gradually faded over the course of two weeks.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="wirtanen2_edited" msid="72366756" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope photographed comet Wirtanen on 13 December 2018, when the comet was 12 million kilometers from Earth&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

<br />Now, TESS has detailed and composite images from every 30 minutes over spanning over 20 days. The images can help scientists figure out what causes a comet to lose one million kilograms as it burns. <br /><br />Until now, scientists don’t know what causes these outbursts aside from the fact that it has something to do with the conditions of the comet’s surface — like a heatwave that suddenly causes ice to explode.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="wirtanen3_edited" msid="72366782" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;table class=&amp;quot;fileinfotpl-type-information toccolours vevent mw-content-ltr&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;tbody&amp;gt;&amp;lt;tr&amp;gt;&amp;lt;td&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Wirtanen photographed in the southern hemisphere from Balcarce, Argentina&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/td&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/tr&amp;gt;&amp;lt;tr&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/tr&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/tbody&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/table&amp;gt;"></div>

<br /><strong>Catching the tail<br /></strong><br />A comet’s trail and tail are two different things. The tail is the spray of gas and dust that runs behind the comet. The trail, on the other hand, is a field of large debris that outlines the comet’s orbital path. The main difference is that a tail changes direction depending on solar winds, but the trail stays in place.<br /><br />“Tail dust is very fine, a lot like smoke. But trail dust is much larger—more like sand and pebbles. We think comets lose most of their mass through their dust trails. When the Earth runs into a comet’s dust trail, we get meteor showers,” said Michael Kelly, one of the co-authors of the paper.<br /><br />And, this is the first time that astronomers have been able to capture images of the trail. <br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/a-second-mysterious-object-from-interstellar-space-may-be-about-to-fly-through-our-solar-system/articleshow/71089009.cms">A second mysterious object from interstellar space may be about to fly through our solar system</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/origin-story-all-comets-come-from-the-same-place-next-to-the-sun/articleshow/71059899.cms">Origin story: All comets come from the same place next to the Sun</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/astronomers-spot-a-never-before-seen-comet-like-thing-in-the-sky/articleshow/25395947.cms">Astronomers Spot A Never-Before-Seen Comet-Like Thing In The Sky</a><br />

NASA captures an exploding comet on its hunt for planets outside our solar system

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The 12P/Pons-Brooks comet is passing by Earth for the first time in the 21st century.</li><li>It is larger than typical comets and has been dubbed the "Devil Comet" for appearing to have horns.</li></ul><p>The so-called "Devil Comet" is barreling past Earth and exploding on its way around the sun, but a researcher who studies such phenomenon told Insider that while the comet is large and unusual, its menacing name — a reference to the appearance of horns — does not mean it poses any threat to the third planet from the sun.</p><p>Known to scientists as 12P/Pons-Brooks, the comet last made an appearance in Earth's skies more than 70 years ago. Judging by its brightness, astronomers have <a target="_blank" href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/aba2d1">estimated that</a> the solid part of the comet, or its nucleus, is about 12.4 miles across — roughly twice the size of Mount Everest.</p><p>Typically, comets are between 0.6 and 1.8 miles wide, according to Teddy Kareta, a postdoctoral researcher at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.</p><p>"We know it's big. We know it's an outlier. We know it's rare," Kareta told Insider.</p><p>We also know it is likely to be most visible next spring, but not because it's barreling toward Earth in another extinction-level event. In fact, Kareta said, at its closest the comet will still be about one-and-half astronomical units away, or put another away: even further from Earth than the sun.</p><p>"It might be bright enough that you can see with your naked eye or with binoculars, but that's not because it's going to be super close," Kareta said. "It's because it's just generally very bright."</p><p>Indeed, the comet is both bright and highly unusual. Its "horns" are actually tails of gas and dust formed by an odd series of explosive outbursts that scientists still do not understand. Two such outbursts have been witnessed this year: first in July, then earlier this month.</p><p>An "outburst," according to Kareta, is "where comets suddenly get much more active," throwing off tons of gas and dust in a short period of time. When this happens, "the comet brightens really rapidly and then sort of fades back to the brightness it had before," he said. "And in Pons-Brooks, these are really, really bright — really, really large outbursts. And this is what makes this comet so interesting to scientists."</p><p>These outbursts have been particularly interesting due to their frequency and where they occurred. One theory is that comets contain forms of ice that, when exposed for the first time to heat from the sun, cause volatile explosions. But those explosions have typically been observed closer to the sun, and not often. According to Kareta, "it might happen twice in five years."</p><p>The Pons-Brooks comet, by contrast, is exploding relatively often and, confoundingly, far away from the sun. Right now, it's further off than Mars, Kareta noted, where "it's just not that warm." That raises the question: "Where's the energy coming from that powers these kinds of large outbursts? And the fact that it can apparently do so many, so often?"</p><p>The comet is expected to reach peak brightness in mid-April 2024 as it continues on its 71.2-year journey around the sun. Astronomers, professional or otherwise, are looking forward to it.</p><p>"I think a lot of people are really excited about it," Kareta said.</p>

The real science behind the mysterious 'Devil Comet' that's larger than Mount Everest and erupting for reasons scientists don't fully understand  

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Astronomers have spotted a "once-in-a-lifetime" comet shaped like the Millennium Falcon.</li><li>The comet will make its closest approach to the sun next year, just weeks after a solar eclipse.</li></ul><p>Astronomers have spotted a "once-in-a-lifetime" comet shaped like the Millennium Falcon — and sky gazers may soon be able to see it for themselves without a telescope.</p><p>The comet, known as Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, abruptly brightened 100-fold on July 20 as plumes of debris and ice were blasted off it into space.</p><p>This gave it a horseshoe shape, which scientists likened to the Millennium Falcon spaceship from "Star Wars."</p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-heading-earth-bright-outshine-stars-scientists-c-2023-a32023-3">comet</a> will make its closest approach to the sun next year, passing about 144 million miles from our planet on June 2, 2024.</p><p>What makes the event even more exciting is that its approach will come just weeks after North America's total <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/solar-eclipse-stunning-images-show-sun-obscured-in-rare-event-2021-6">solar eclipse</a> on April 8, 2024. </p><p>"It's once-in-a-blue-moon that you see a comet next to an eclipsed sun," Richard Miles of the British Astronomical Association told Insider.</p><p>While it may be possible to see the comet with the naked eye, Miles advised using binoculars. "It should be visible, it's guaranteed to get a lot brighter, just in the normal way all comets get a lot brighter. </p><p>"What it could also do is have an outburst during the eclipse," he said.</p><h2>A decades-old mystery</h2><p>Astronomers aren't sure exactly why Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, which orbits the sun every 71 years, has brightened so drastically in recent weeks.</p><p>Miles said there may be an active ice volcano on the surface that is causing it to light up the sky. </p><p>"It's something of a revolutionary idea that you have liquid inside a comet and scientists have for decades never really come to terms with it," he said.</p><p>"When you see this comet do what it's doing, you can't really explain it without saying 'As well as solids and gases, there are liquids inside the comet making it behave in this very unusual way,'" he added.</p><p>The discovery helps back up a theory that comets not only brought water to Earth but also helped spread the germs of life on our planet, Miles said. </p><p>"Comets come from the Oort cloud which is far beyond the orbit of Neptune and Uranus," Dr Edward Gomez of the Las Cumbres Observatory in Cardiff, Wales told Insider.</p><p>"It's all the stuff which is left over from when the solar system was made. Everything that formed into planets has been evolving for 4.5 Billion years (e.g. through geophysical processes and weather) but the Oort cloud is pristine. It gives us a great snapshot of what conditions were like when the planets formed and how the planets formed."</p><div type="image" title="Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, which was first spotted in 1812 and orbits the sun every 71 years" height="844" width="1689" msid="102177210" hostid="261"></div><p>Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks' outburst was discovered on July 20 by Elek Tamás of Harsona Observatory, Nyiregyhaza, Hungary. It was later captured by members of the <a href="https://www.cometchasers.org/home/comet-12p-observations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Comet Chasers</a> education and outreach project led by Helen Usher of Cardiff/Open University in the UK, using the Faulkes Telescope.</p><p>The comet has likely streamed 10 billion kilograms of dust and ice into space, according to Carrie Holt of the University of Maryland, speaking to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-comet-has-sprouted-icy-wings-on-a-plunge-around-the-sun/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Scientific American.</a></p><p>While most people will have to wait until next year to see the comet, amateur astronomers could be in with a chance of seeing it now using a six-inch telescope and pointing it to the constellation of Draco in the Northern Sky.</p><p>"At the moment it is only really visible with a telescope at a nice dark site but around the time of the eclipse next April, it will be bright enough to easily find with a pair of binoculars from your back garden, even if you live in suburbs," said Gomez.</p>

A Millennium Falcon-shaped comet heading toward Earth is so bright you'll able to see it with your naked eye, say astronomers

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Scientists just discovered something amazing: sinkholes on a comet.</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These are the first sinkholes ever detected on a comet, and some are so deep, you could fit the entire Washington Monument inside of one.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Not only that, they're likely the driving force behind giant jets of gas and dust - shown in the image to the right - the comet is spitting into space.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The sinkholes were recently discovered on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by a team of researchers at the University of Maryland who published their results in the July 2 issue of the journal </span><a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature14564">Nature</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The team analyzed data collected by the Rosetta spacecraft, which began orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August 2014. Since then, Rosetta has captured the most </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/rosetta-images-of-comet-67pchuryumov-gerasimenko-2014-9">detailed images of a comet in history</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. When scientists first looked at some of these photos, they were mystified by the hundreds of pits, like the one in the image below, dotting the desolate, lumpy surface.</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These pits, of which there are approximately 380 across the entire comet, are now thought to be giant sink holes. Here's a closer shot of the same sinkhole.</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Comets are basically dusty snowballs in space that orbit the sun. As they travel closer to the sun, they heat up and the ice underneath their surface will, in the vacuum of space, turn directly into a gas through a process called sublimation.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">When this happens, the dust and rock on top of the ice no longer has anything holding it up, and it begins to collapse. This collapse generates giant sinkholes ranging from tens to hundreds of feet in diameter, the team reports.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"The sinkholes on 67P are very large, two football fields next to each other and deeper than the Washington monument," Dennis Bodewits, one of the authors of the study and an assistant research scientist of astronomy at the University of Maryland, told Business Insider in an email.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Moreover, once the sinkhole forms it exposes additional ice along the sides of the hole, which are what produce the brilliant jets the comet emits, like the ones below:</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Until now, scientists thought the jets formed from thawing frozen gas on the surface, but it now seems that the story is more involved. The comet is about 4 billion miles from Earth, making it difficult to study these sink holes close up, but luckily they have a much closer analog: sinkholes on Earth, which form much the same way:</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"So we already have a library of information to help us understand how this process works, which allows us to use these pits to study what lies under the comet's surface," Bodewits said in a </span><a href="http://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/3090">press release</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The European Space Association, which is in charge of the mission, originally thought the pits were caused by </span><a href="http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/04/20/osiris-catches-activity-in-the-act/">explosive outbursts</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, causing dust jets to spew out of the comet.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But, the size of the pits was too large to be explained by the explosive events alone, they concluded. Now, scientists will need to figure out where the sinkholes factor into the lifecycle of a comet. Here's a graphic by the team showing how these sinkholes form and produce the comet's jets:</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In light of this discovery, you might wonder about the Philae lander that touched down on the comet last November - making history by becoming the first probe to ever land on a comet. Luckily, Bodewits says Philae is in no danger.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"While that does dwarf Philae (Rosetta's desk-sized lander), I am not concerned that it [will] disappear in a sink hole," Bodewits said.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That's because, he said, the sinkholes are clustered on specific parts of the comet, and none are near where </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/rosetta-philae-lander-under-clif-and-tilted-2014-11">Philae ended up</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> near the head of the comet. That's good news, since Philae recently </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/esa-rosetta-philae-comet-lander-wakes-up-2015-6">started sending back signals</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Earth, which will teach us even more about the comet from the surface.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-land-speeding-comet-space-philae-lander-rosetta-satellite-2015-2">Scientists finally figured out how to land on a comet going 35,000 mph</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="JxMHI0czrmkW8zuJGg2gPpQ-gkV_QQT_" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Mysterious pits on this comet are actually enormous sinkholes

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The Eta Aquarids meteor shower is due to peak May 5, offering up to 40 shooting stars per hour. </li><li>This year could be particularly spectacular with experts predicting a meteor "outburst." </li></ul><p>A spectacular <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lyrid-meteor-shower-will-reach-its-peak-heres-how-to-watch-2023-4?r=US&amp;IR=T#lie-on-your-back-and-point-your-feet-east-4">meteor shower</a> is peaking, giving sky gazers the opportunity to see up to 40 shooting stars every hour. </p><p>The dazzling display is known as the Eta Aquarids and takes place in May each year when Earth travels through debris left behind by Halley's Comet.</p><p>This year is set to be even more stunning than usual, with experts predicting an "outburst" that could double the number of meteors in the sky. </p><p>"When you go outside during the Eta Aquarids this year, you'll see particles from Comet Halley that started their journey in the time of King David," Bill Cooke, lead for NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, told Insider.</p><p>The meteor shower is active this year from between April 15 to May 27, but it is expected to peak on May 5. </p><p>Here's how to get the best view of this stunning event, according to NASA.</p><h2>Prepare for a stunning spectacle </h2><div type="image" title="Side by side images show a picture of the meteor shower and a picture of Halley's comet against the sky" height="1499" width="3000" msid="99852836" hostid="261"></div><p>The Eta Aquarids are one of the few showers that favor the Southern Hemisphere. But this year, experts say that even in the Northern Hemisphere, there may be twice as many meteors visible as in previous years. </p><p>That's because Jupiter has propelled and concentrated ancient debris from Halley's comet into our planet's path.</p><p>Halley's comet passes the Earth about every 76 years, and every time, it leaves a little dust in its wake. This particular dust was left behind by the comet about 3,000 years ago, according to Cooke. </p><p>"This year, Jupiter has piled this 3,000-year-old stuff in front of us and we're gonna run into it," said Cooke, specifying that there's no risk associated with meteor showers. </p><h2>Go outside a few hours before dawn</h2><div type="image" title="An illuminated tent is set against a dark night sky." height="1414" width="1885" msid="99852837" hostid="261"></div><p>"The Eta Aquarids are not very respectful of one's sleep cause you have to get up in the early morning hours — the pre-dawn hours — to see them," said Cooke. </p><p>The shower is expected to peak around 4 a.m. UTC on May 5, but Cooke advised the best time to go out is around 2 to 3 a.m. your local time. </p><p>Unfortunately, this year the moon will be full, which means there's a chance it will outshine the meteors. </p><p>'The light from the full moon increases the background of the sky, which washes out the faint meteors," said Cooke.</p><p>Still, because of the outburst you're still in with a chance of seeing up to 40 meteors per hour, said Cooke. </p><p>"The important thing is you'll see meteors if you go outside and look," he added. </p><h2>Look for streaks and fireballs</h2><p>Look out for long trains streaking the sky caused by debris from the meteor burning up in the atmosphere.</p><p>"You can imagine meteors as snowy dirt balls, but loosely held together," Cooke said.</p><p>"When they hit the atmosphere, they not only burn up, they break apart, they fragment. And if they're big and dusty, they create these persistent trains, which are dust they left behind in their wake,"  he said.</p><p>The shower may also bring the occasional "fireball," which is a bright flash that happens when the meteor explodes upon hitting the atmosphere.</p><h2>Lie on your back and look up</h2><div type="image" title="Yound adults look up at the sky, wearing heavy winter clothes and laying on a blanket." height="1205" width="1607" msid="99852839" hostid="261"></div><p>For the best shot at seeing a shooting star, head away from city lights. Lay on your back — bring a blanket, lawn chair, or sleeping bag — and look straight up to the sky. No need to bring goggles or a telescope as the meteors are best seen with the naked eye.</p><p>NASA recommends pointing your feet east for the best view of the shower, though Cooke claims the most important thing is to look away from the moon. </p><p>Shooting stars can appear anywhere in the sky, but if you want something to point your gaze to, look for the Aquarius constellation, which is where the shower gets its name. </p><h2>Be patient, and let your eyes adjust</h2><div type="image" title="Four people are silhouetted huddling together against the night sky." height="1500" width="2000" msid="99852840" hostid="261"></div><p>Chances are you weren't driving in complete darkness and you would have been looking at your phone to get you where you need to be.</p><p>That means your eyes will need some time to adjust.</p><p>"I often get people say: 'I went outside to look at such and such meteor shower and I didn't see any. I was texting my friends and they didn't see it either.' Well, maybe that's because you were looking at your phone all the time instead of looking up," said Cooke. </p><p>Be patient. NASA says you should give your eyes at least 30 minutes to get used to the dark sky before expecting to spot the shooting stars.</p><h2>Next year's outburst will be 'even stronger'</h2><div type="image" title="An outdoor shot shows a shooting star against the milky way in the sky." height="2399" width="3199" msid="99852841" hostid="261"></div><p>If you can't go to see the Eta Aquarids this year, don't despair: experts think the same debris will be in our planet's path next year. </p><p>"Next year there will be an even stronger outburst," said Cooke</p><p>"After that, the next time they will be an outburst will be in the year 2044 through 2046. So you will have to wait over 20 years to see another Eta Aquarids outburst," he added. </p>

The Eta Aquarids meteor shower is peaking, giving you the chance to see up to 40 shooting stars an hour. Here's how to watch.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1906a/">NASA/ESA/University of Hawaii/European Southern Observatory</a></span></p><p class="caption">Asteroid 6478 Gault with two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that suggest the space rock is self-destructing.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>A 2.5-mile-wide <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/asteroids" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asteroid</a> called 6478 Gault was discovered in 1988.</li><li>The space rock recently grew two long, bright tails like a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/comets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">comet</a>, which astronomers struggled to explain.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/hubble-space-telescope" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hubble telescope</a> observations helped confirm that the asteroid is spinning quickly.</li><li>A sunlight-based effect called "YORP" may have spun up Gault to a speed at which a pebble hitting it would cause it to eject dirt and dust.</li></ul><p>In space, no one <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/false-space-facts-misconceptions-2017-7">can hear</a> an asteroid scream. But astronomers just used the Hubble telescope to see one begin to destroy itself.</p><p>A 2.5-mile-wide asteroid called 6478 Gault was first discovered in 1988, and it seemed like many of the other 800,000 known space rocks.</p><p>But in October 2018, astronomers saw something strange through their telescopes: Gault had become "active" and sprouted two big, bright tails, much <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oumuamua-interstellar-space-rock-alien-spaceship-evidence-2019-1">like a comet</a>. Its brightest tail stretched more than 500,000 miles long.</p><p>Some space rocks that initially look like asteroids are later found to be comets when they pass close to the sun. The boost in solar energy can warm up ice and other frozen compounds hidden under layers of dust, turning those materials into gases and leading the rock to spew out comet debris to form a long, glowing tail.</p><p>Gault didn't seem to fit the bill, though, since it lurks about 214 million miles away from the sun in a fairly circular orbit between <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-outposts-are-doable-but-maybe-not-colonies-2018-5">Mars</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jupiter-pictures-nasa-juno-spacecraft-2018-4">Jupiter</a>. In other words, it never swung close to the sun. So scientists wondered if another space rock had collided with Gault, splashing its dusty guts all over space.</p><p>Now, thanks to multiple observations by NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope, the mystery appears to be solved: Gault is spinning itself to pieces.</p><p>"This self-destruction event is rare," <a href="https://www.eso.org/~ohainaut/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Olivier Hainaut</a>, an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory, said in <a href="http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2019-22" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a press release</a>. "Active and unstable asteroids such as Gault are only now being detected by means of new survey telescopes that scan the entire sky, which means asteroids such as Gault that are misbehaving cannot escape detection any more."</p><p>Hainaut and his colleagues around the world have submitted <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0004-637X" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a study</a> about the discovery to Astrophysical Journal Letters, which accepted it for publication in the future.</p><p>The team determined an odd behavior called the "YORP effect" is to blame for the ongoing demise of Gault, which could vanish</p><h2>You YORP me right round</h2><p>The YORP effect is named after four scientists that helped lead to its discovery: Ivan Yarkovsky, John O'Keefe, Vladimir Radzievskii, and Stephen Paddack.</p><p>The driver of it is sunlight. When we step outside, light from the sun feels warm on our skin, but not like a force powerful enough to physically move us. But in the vacuum of space, things behave differently, since there's no friction, and objects can orbit a star and persist for millions if not billions of years.</p><p>Even on human-made objects, like a thin reflective sheet, sunlight can generate enough force to propel a vehicle through space. (Scientists are currently exploring how to mimic that effect by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/breakthrough-starshot-laser-beam-power-2018-12">shooting powerful laser beams at tiny spacecraft</a> to zoom them toward other star systems at a fraction of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-fast-speed-light-travels-earth-moon-mars-nasa-2019-1">light-speed</a>.)</p><p>The YORP effect describes a phenomenon in which sunlight hits an asteroid unevenly, or part of the rock's surface preferentially absorbs that energy. In that case, the disparity can gradually accelerate a comet's spin. Over time, that can lead the space rock to start spinning so fast that it rips itself apart.</p><p>That, the researchers figured, could explain why Gault grew tails so far from the sun (see above animation).</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-asteroid-2018-6">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has an asteroid named after her - here's why</a></em></p><p>The effect is something like a parent swinging a kid around by her arms; once the parent rotates fast enough, the kid will eventually lift off the ground. In the case of Gault, Hubble's images - plus follow-up observations by telescopes on Earth - suggested that the asteroid was spinning about once every two hours. The researchers calculated that this was fast enough to counteract Gault's gravity at the surface, allowing dirt and dust to lift off or tumble.</p><p>But what caused Gault's sudden outburst and tail formation in late 2018, after untold years of inactivity?</p><p>"Even a tiny disturbance, like a small impact from a pebble, might have triggered the recent outbursts," <a href="https://uhnai.ifa.hawaii.edu/people/postdocs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jan Kleyna</a>, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and the study's lead author, said in <a href="https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1906/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a press release</a>. "It could have been on the brink of instability for 10 million years."</p><p>Hainaut said the long-term future of Gault is unknown. It might eventually break apart into two big chunks, or the rubble might glue itself back together under its own gravity, forming a newly shaped asteroid.</p><p>"In all cases, this will release a lot of dust, which will be spectacular," Hainaut told Business Insider in an email. "The radiation pressure from the sun will disperse the dust, leaving either the new Gault or the binary/multiple system behind."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-plans-crash-dart-spacecraft-into-asteroid-2017-7">NASA wants to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid to change its course</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

The Hubble telescope caught an asteroid ripping itself to pieces due to the 'YORP effect'

<p>Why are meteor showers like the Perseids so common? Turns out, space isn't as empty as you might think. It's littered with debris that forms those spectacular meteor shower we look forward to each year. Following is a transcript of the video.</p><p>Solar eclipses are rare and you can never predict when an aurora will illuminate the sky. But there's one cosmic light show we can always count on. Meteor showers. They happen around the same time each year and have been doing so for centuries. But despite their brilliance and beauty it doesn't take much to make a meteor shower. You just need three ingredients, the sun, Earth and a comet.</p><p>Comets have been around since the dawn of our solar system over four-and-a-half billion years ago. They formed out of the same disc of gas and dust that created earth and the other seven planets. And like the other planets they too orbit the sun but that's where the similarities end. Most planets orbit the sun on fairly circular orbits whereas comets take a more elliptical path through our solar system. Check out Halley's Comet for example. Right now it's beyond the orbit of the furthest planet Neptune. But over the next 50 years it will travel about three billion miles toward the inner reaches of our solar system. Eventually flying past Earth in the year 2061.</p><p>And it's encounters like this that make meteor showers possible. Because as a comet approaches the inner solar system, the sun's radiation heats up ice under the surface and as that ice turns to a vapor it generates powerful outbursts of gas and dust, sometimes ejecting hundreds of tons of material into space per second. The result is a brilliant stream of debris called the comet tail or coma, which can stretch hundreds to thousands of miles across. In fact, space is littered with comet tail debris that our planet passes through each year. And when that happens, the debris strikes our atmosphere at over 100,000 miles an hour, incinerating the four-and-a-half billion year old fragments in seconds. This produces brilliant flashes of light that we call a meteor shower.</p><p>Now some meteor showers are more spectacular than others, giving us anywhere from a few to over a hundred meteors an hour. And even the same meteor shower can vary from year to year. It all depends on how much debris we scoop up as we pass through the tail. Regardless, comet tails tend to follow the same path as the comet itself, which means they pass through the same spot along Earth's orbit. That's why we get the same meteor showers around the same time each year. At the end of October for example, we pass through the tale of Halley's Comet which gives us the Orionids meteor shower. And every August, we pass through comet Swift-Tuttle's tail which we see as the Perseids meteor shower. But it's not just October and August, meteor showers occur year-round. So check your calendar to see when the next one will be coming to a sky near you.</p>

What you're really seeing during a meteor shower

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/archive/SPACE-PBEAHUKPYBS.html">Ali Jarekji/Reuters</a></span></p><p class="caption">Stargazers in Amman prepare to watch the Leonid meteor shower.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>The Leonid meteor shower occurs each year around mid-November and produces fast, bright shooting stars.</strong></li><li><strong>This year, the astronomical event peaks on Friday and Saturday.</strong></li><li><strong>A new moon will make seeing the meteors easier, but those with dark skies can expect to see 10 to 15 per hour.</strong></li></ul><p><br />Whenever Earth plows through a trail of dust and debris left by a comet, a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/13-spectacular-meteor-showers-that-you-wont-want-to-miss-2016-7">meteor shower</a> happens - and right now the Leonids are peaking in activity.</p><p>The Leonid meteor shower, which is amid-November spike in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/perseid-meteor-shower-where-when-visible-2017-8">shooting stars</a>, happens each year thanks to Comet Tempel-Tuttle, a space rock that litters Earth's path around the sun with tiny grains of rock, dust, and ice.</p><p>The Leonids' peak is going on now. In fact, the early morning hours of Saturday (November 18) may be the best time to watch. There's a new moon, so the sky will be very dark.</p><p>While the Leonids are famous for creating meteor storms or outbursts - showers of roughly 1,000 or more meteors per hour - this year's Leonids will produce 10-15 meteors per hour, according <a href="http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-leonid-meteor-shower" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">to Deborah Byrd at EarthSky.org</a>.</p><p>"The first great meteor storm of modern times was nearly 200 years ago; it was the Leonid shower of November 1833," Byrd said. "That famous shower had a major effect on the development of the scientific study of meteors. It's one reason the Leonids are so famous."</p><p>Although this year's show won't be quite that dramatic, the rate of shooting stars will still be several times higher than a typical night, and they're exceptionally bright and fast.</p><h2>How to watch the Leonid meteor shower</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/JORDAN-METEOR-RP3DRIFVMYAA.html">Ali Jarekji/Reuters</a></span></p><p class="caption">A Leonid meteor - a fragment of Comet Tempel-Tuttle - streaks across the night sky.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The best time to watch the Leonids is between midnight and dawn. Don't go out too late, though, as pre-dawn twilight can wash out dark skies hours before the sun rises in many locations.</p><p>Telescopes, binoculars, or other equipment isn't required to see Leonid meteors. In fact, staring through a tube of any kind will just limit your view of the whole sky and decrease your chances of seeing the streaks of light. Clear skies, your eyes (with glasses, if needed), and a bit of patience are all you need.</p><p>Move to a remote location away from the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-light-pollution-skyglow-map-2016-6">light pollution of nearby towns and cities</a>, make yourself comfortable, and set aside a good chunk of time to enjoy the show.</p><p>"Perhaps the key work to remember in meteor observing is patience. Most meteor showers will not produce a spectacular display, but will instead produce a steady, reliable show - sometimes with a few surprises," the American Meteor Society <a href="https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-faq/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote on its website</a>. "Meteor watching is like watching a graceful, natural fireworks display, and you never know when or how bright the next 'shot' will be."</p><p>The Leonids produce the fastest and brightest meteors of all the showers, since they pummel Earth's atmosphere at nearly 45 miles <em>per second</em>. That's about 200 times faster than a speeding bullet.</p><p>The precise direction you need to look in the night sky varies depending on your location, but the meteors will radiate from the constellation Leo the lion. In New York, for example, the Leonids will come from the east, roughly a few outstretched fists above the horizon.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacecraft-cemetery-pacific-ocean-dead-satellites-2017-10">There's a place at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean where hundreds of giant spacecraft go to die</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

The Leonid meteor shower is peaking - here's the best time to look for shooting stars

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The Perseids, the <a href="http://www.space.com/33671-perseids-get-a-boost-from-jupiter.html">most-watched meteor shower</a> of the year, are happening right now.<p>As our planet spins through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, tiny grain-of-rice-size bits of debris smack into our atmosphere and burn up, sizzling through the sky like shooting stars.</p><p>The meteor shower runs from July 17 until August 24 this year and will reach its&#xa0;peak in the evening hours of August 11.</p><p>And this year, a strange effect of the most massive planet in our solar system will make the Perseids twice as good.</p><p>"Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of Aug. 11-12," Bill Cooke with NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, said in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/watchtheskies/perseid-meteor-shower-aug11-12.html">NASA press release</a>. "Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour."</p><h2><strong>How to watch</strong></h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Prime time for the Perseids will be during the shower's peak, August 11 and 12. The best time to head outside and catch some meteors is between midnight and dawn.<p>Unfortunately, some of the meteors will be drowned out by a waxing moon, which is when the moon is just a little greater than half full. But once the moon fully sets at about 1 am, you'll be in the clear.</p><p>You won't need any telescopes or fancy equipment to see the meteors, just clear skies, your eyes, and a little bit of patience. Find a dark, remote spot away from the light pollution of nearby towns and cities, make yourself comfortable, and set aside a good chunk of time to enjoy the show.</p><p>Perseid meteors are bright and fast, and often leave persistent trains, which is when the bright streak lingers in the sky. They are best seen from the northern hemisphere. The meteors travel at the mind-numbing speed of 132,000 miles per hour - 500 times faster than the fastest car in the world.&#xa0;</p><p>"Give yourself at least an hour of viewing time for watching any meteor shower," <a href="http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-eta-aquarid-meteor-shower#when-how">EarthSky.org advises</a>. "Meteors tend to come in spurts that are interspersed by lulls. Also, it can take as long as 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark."</p><p>If bad weather or bright lights are preventing you from catching any meteors, NASA will be offering a live broadcast at <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc">Ustream</a>. See the broadcast stream below.</p><h2><strong>What causes a meteor shower?</strong></h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The orbits of comets are often a little lopsided.<p>When a comet swings too close to the sun, the sun's light boils its icy surface, releasing particles of ice and dust.</p><p>This debris follows the comet's path, forming a tail that points away from the sun. As Earth crosses the orbit of this comet, we pass through the tail.</p><p>The gravity of our planet attracts the dust and ice that the comet has left in its wake. When the debris is pulled into our atmosphere, it rubs up against air molecules, causing the debris to burn up and streak through the sky.</p><p>This results in glowing trails of light that we see as meteors, or "shooting stars."</p><p>The comet producing the meteors in the Perseids is <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/gallery/iss028e024847.html">Swift-Tuttle</a>, which takes 133 years to make its trip around the sun.</p><p>Comet Swift-Tuttle is a 16-mile-wide hunk of space rock and, traveling at 130,000 mph, takes 133 years to orbit the sun. It's the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-watch-the-persieds-august-meteor-shower-2015-8">largest object in our solar system that makes repeated close approaches to Earth</a>.</p><p>This year, Jupiter's monstrous gravitational pull will nudge particles from Swift-Tuttle about 930,000 miles closer to Earth, resulting in brighter, stronger meteors shooting across the sky. Instead of the usual 60 to 90 meteors per hour, this year's shower will produce as many as 200 per hour.</p><p>The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but if you trace their paths back, they all appear to come from the same point: the radiant. That's because the meteors are all approaching us at the same angle. Meteor showers are all named after the radiant that the meteors can be traced back to.</p><p>The radiant point for the Perseids is from the constellation Perseus the Hero.</p><p>Check out the <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc">livestream</a> from NASA below on August 11 and 12, starting at 10&#xa0;p.m. EST:</p><p><div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/perseid-meteor-shower-time-lapse-2015-8">Here's a time-lapse of the Perseids - the most stunning meteor shower of the year</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="RpdTYxdzrjYkmbSPdfzf2VhtvZLgJTKg" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

A slight nudge from Jupiter will make the most popular meteor shower of the year twice as spectacular - here's how to watch

<p>A new meteor shower is expected to peak in the early morning hours on Saturday, May 24, with some forecasters predicting more than 200 meteors per hour.</p>
<p>The shower happens as Earth passes through a stream of debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR, which makes a full orbit of the sun every five years. The comet was discovered a little more than a decade ago in February 2004.</p>
<p>Because the meteor shower has never been seen before, scientists don't know exactly what to expect. If the debris field is large, it could be a spectacular show (one that even rivals the Perseids in August).</p>
<p>It could also be a snooze-fest. "It all depends on how active the comet was more a century ago," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw3hVTUQ43U" target="_blank">NASA said in a video</a><span>. That's when the streams of dust that Earth is now crossing were ejected by the comet. </span></p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>The meteor shower gets its name because the space rocks appear to originate from the constellation Camelopardalis, also known as the giraffe, near the north star.</p>
<p><strong>Viewing Times</strong></p>
<p>The best viewing will be between <strong>2 to 4 a.m. EDT</strong>, according to NASA. Folks in the Northern Hemisphere will have a better show - provided observers have clear, dark skies away from city lights - because the peak occurs during the nighttime hours.</p>
<p>"Because this is a new meteor shower, surprises are possible," NASA said. "Outbursts could occur hours before or after the forecasted peak."</p>
<p><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>NASA</span></p></div><p></p></div></strong></p>
<p><strong>Where To Watch</strong></p>
<p>If you can't step outside or weather conditions are poor, Slooh will live broadcast the shower, accompanied by commentary from a handful of meteor experts. The broadcast will begin at 11 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 23.</p>
<p></p>

A Never-Before-Seen Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend - Here's How To Watch

<p class="source"><span><a href="http://astropix.ipac.caltech.edu/image/spitzer/ssc2008-05a">NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of Earth-like planets.</p><ul><li><strong>NASA's has detected 219 possible new planets.</strong></li><li><strong>About 10 of these new worlds may be Earth-sized and habitable. </strong></li><li><strong>The Kepler space telescope that discovered the new planets has so far found more than 4,000 worlds.</strong></li><li><strong>The results suggest that there may be billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.</strong></li></ul><p>NASA scientists on Monday announced the discovery of 219 new objects beyond our solar system that are almost certainly planets.</p><p>What's more, 10 of these worlds may be rocky, about the size of Earth, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-most-like-earth-support-alien-life-2016-5">habitable</a>.</p><p>The data comes from the space agency's long-running Kepler exoplanet-hunting mission. From March 2009 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-kepler-spacecraft-planet-hunting-mission-is-over-2013-8">through May 2013</a>, Kepler stared down about 145,000 sun-like stars in a tiny section of the night sky near the constellation Cygnus.</p><p>Most of the stars in Kepler's view were hundreds or thousands of light-years away, so there's little chance humans will ever visit them - or at least any time soon. However, the data could tell astronomers how common Earth-like planets are, and what the chances of finding <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">intelligent extraterrestrial life</a> might be.</p><p>"We have taken our telescope and we have counted up how many planets are similar to the Earth in this part of the sky," Susan Thompson, a Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute, said during a press conference at NASA Ames Research Center on Monday.</p><p>"We said, 'how many planets there are similar to Earth?' With the data I have, I can now make that count," she said. "We're going to determine how common other planets are. Are there other places we could live in the galaxy that we don't yet call home?"</p><p>Added to Kepler's previous discoveries, the 10 new Earth-like planet candidates make 49 total, Thompson said. If any of them have stable atmospheres, there's even a chance they could harbor alien life.</p><h2>The new Earths next door?</h2><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-releases-kepler-survey-catalog-with-hundreds-of-new-planet-candidates">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p>Scientists wouldn't say too much about the 10 new planets, only that they appear to be roughly Earth-sized and orbit in their stars' "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">habitable zone</a>" - where water is likely to be stable and liquid, not frozen or boiled away. That doesn't guarantee these planets are actually habitable, though. Beyond harboring a stable atmosphere, things like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">plate tectonics</a> and not being <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-habitable-atmosphere-jwst-2016-9">tidally locked</a> may also be essential.</p><p>However, Kepler researchers suspect that almost countless Earth-like planets are waiting to be found. This is because the telescope can only "see" exoplanets that transit, or pass, in front of their stars.</p><p>The transit method of detecting planets that Kepler scientists use involves looking for dips in a star's brightness, which are caused by a planet blocking out a fraction of the starlight (similar to how the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-total-solar-eclipses-will-end-2017-6">moon eclipses the sun</a>).</p><p><br />Because most planets orbit in the same disk or plane, and that plane is rarely aligned with Earth, that means Kepler can only see a fraction of distant solar systems. (Exoplanets that are angled slightly up or down are invisible to the transit method.)</p><p>Despite those challenges, Kepler has revealed the existence of 4,034 planet candidates, with <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-releases-kepler-survey-catalog-with-hundreds-of-new-planet-candidates">2,335 of those</a> confirmed as exoplanets. And these are just the worlds in 0.25% of the night sky.</p><p>"In fact, you'd need 400 Keplers to cover the whole sky," Mario Perez, a Kepler program scientist at NASA, said during the briefing.</p><p>The biggest number of planets appear to be a completely new class of planets, called "mini-Neptunes," Benjamin Fulton, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and California Institute of Technology, said during the briefing.</p><p>Such worlds are between the size of Earth and the gas giants of our solar system, and are likely the most numerous kind in the universe. "Super-Earths," which are rocky planets that can be up to 10 times more massive than our own, are also very common.</p><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.caltech.edu/news/new-branch-family-tree-exoplanets-discovered-78703">NASA/Kepler/Caltech (T. Pyle)</a></span></p><p>While just 49 of Kepler's thousands of planet candidates are Earth-sized and in a habitable zone, the discovery has rocked the scientific world: This could mean that billions of such worlds exist in the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-milky-way-galaxy-looks-like-2016-9">Milky Way galaxy</a> alone.</p><p>"This number could have been very, very small," Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at Caltech, said during the briefing. "I, for one, am ecstatic."</p><h2>Kepler's big back-up plan</h2><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/searching-for-far-out-and-wandering-worlds">NASA Ames/W. Stenzel and JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt</a></span></p><p>Kepler finished collecting its first mission's data in May 2013. It has taken scientists years to analyze that information because it's often difficult parse, interpret, and verify.</p><p>Thompson said this new Kepler data analysis will be the last for this leg of the telescope's first observations. Kepler suffered two hardware failures (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-kepler-telescope-from-emergency-mode-2016-4">and then some</a>) that limited its ability to aim at one area of the night sky, ending its mission to look at stars that are similar to the sun.</p><p>But scientists' back-up plan, called <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014PASP..126..398H">the K2 mission</a>, kicked off in May 2014. It takes advantage of Kepler's restricted aim and uses it to study a variety of objects in space, including supernovas, baby stars, comets, and even asteroids. </p><p>Although K2 is just getting off the ground, other telescopes have had success in these types of endeavors. In February, for example, a different one revealed the existence of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-like-planets-seven-trappist-1-system-2017-02">seven rocky, Earth-size planets circling a red dwarf star</a>.</p><p class="source"><span>NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth.</p><p>Such dwarf stars are the most common in the universe and can have more angry outbursts of solar flares and coronal mass ejections than sun-like stars.</p><p>But paradoxically, they seem to harbor the most small, rocky planets in a habitable zone in the universe - and thus may be <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">excellent places to look for signs of alien life</a>.</p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer says it's 'too late'</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video

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