We have NEOWISE which won't return for nearly 7,000 years, and also ATLAS which we will never see again. Folks, how lucky are we to have these observatories in space, deep space probes, and awesome land based telescopes like Keck and the Extremely Large Telescope (yes that's what it's called) being built in the mountains of Chili.
ATLAS
NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO-A spacecraft, captured these images of comet ATLAS as it swooped by the Sun from May 25 – June 1. During the observations and outside STEREO’s field of view, ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft crossed one of the comet’s two tails.
In the animated image, ATLAS emerges from the top of the frame and approaches the Sun — off camera to left — against gusts of solar wind. Its dust tail, which reflects sunlight, appears white. Mercury is also visible as a bright dot emerging from the left against the stationary starfield. The vertical streaks in the image are artifacts created by saturation from bright background stars.
While STEREO recorded this footage, Solar Orbiter crossed one of comet ATLAS’s tails. Launched in February 2020, the spacecraft wasn’t scheduled to enter full science operations until June 15, but engineers adjusted Solar Orbiter’s testing schedule and turned on its four most relevant instruments for the encounter. It’s the first time a comet tail crossing by a spacecraft not designed to chase them was predicted in advance.
As material sheds from a comet’s nucleus, it leaves behind two tails: a thin ion tail, made of charged particles, and a more diffuse dust tail that reflects visible light. The ion tail always points away from the Sun regardless of the comet’s trajectory; the dust tail more closely follows the comet’s path. Solar Orbiter crossed the ion tail on May 31, some 27 million miles downstream and outside STEREO’s field of view. The team is still awaiting those results. It will fly through the remnants of the dust tail on June 6.
Comet ATLAS was discovered on Dec. 28, 2019 in images captured by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS robotic astronomical survey system in Hawaii. Comets are traditionally named after the instruments or person that discovered them. The comet follows an orbit that takes it past the Sun approximately every 6,000 years, though observations suggest the comet is currently disintegrating and is unlikely to return.
Back to the Juno probe...
Striking atmospheric features in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere are captured in this series of color-enhanced images from NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
An anticyclonic white oval, called N5-AWO, can be seen at center left of the first image (at far left) and appears slightly higher in the second and third images. A tempest known as the Little Red Spot is visible near the bottom of the second and third images. The reddish-orange band that is prominently displayed in the fourth and fifth images is the North North Temperate Belt.
From left to right, this sequence of images was taken between 9:54 p.m. and 10:11 p.m. PDT on July 15 (12:54 a.m. and 1:11 a.m. EDT on July 16), as the spacecraft performed its 14th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno’s altitude ranged from about 15,700 to 3,900 miles (25,300 to 6,200 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a latitude of approximately 69 to 36 degrees.
This extraordinary view of Jupiter was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on the outbound leg of its 12th close flyby of the gas giant planet.
This new perspective of Jupiter from the south makes the Great Red Spot appear as though it is in northern territory. This view is unique to Juno and demonstrates how different our view is when we step off the Earth and experience the true nature of our three-dimensional universe.
Juno took the images used to produce this color-enhanced image on April 1 between 3:04 a.m. PDT (6:04 a.m. EDT) and 3:36 a.m. PDT (6:36 a.m. EDT). At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between 10,768 miles (17,329 kilometers) to 42,849 miles (68,959 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a southern latitude spanning 34.01 to 71.43 degrees.
This image of Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1 between 3:09 a.m. PDT (6:09 a.m. EDT) and 3:24 a.m. PDT (6:24 a.m. EDT), as Juno performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was 15,379 miles (24,749 kilometers) to 30,633 miles (49,299 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a southern latitude spanning 43.2 to 62.1 degrees.