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An artistic representation of Chiron’s nucleus surrounded by debris and a coma of dust and gas. Credit: William Gonzalez Sierra UCF researchers utilized the James Webb Space Telescope to uncover unique characteristics of (2060) Chiron, a distant “centaur” that exhibits traits of both a comet and an asteroid. These findings provide valuable insights into the origins of our Solar System. Although our Solar System is billions of years old, we’ve only recently gained deeper insight into one of its most dynamic and intriguing members: (2060) Chiron. Chiron belongs to a group of celestial objects known as “Centaurs.” These objects orbit...

Asteroid 62412. Credit: Scott Sheppard Comets are often called “dirty snowballs” by astronomers. However, various investigative missions, such as Giotto and Deep Impact, revealed them to be blackened, cratered, and fractured. No ice fields, reflective crust, or watery clouds were observed. Indeed, the latest pictures from the Rosetta mission of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko indicate that it is a mountain of rock in space. According to a recent press release, the Gemini Observatory’s image of asteroid 62412, located between Mars and Jupiter, is the first time that one of the Hygiea family of asteroids has exhibited a tail, and is only the...