OU professor discovers distant long-period comets quickly fade away - EurekAlert

As comets approach the Sun, they release gas and dust known to astronomers as cometary activity. For comets passing near or inside Earth’s orbit, this activity slows over successive orbits. University of Oklahoma astronomer Nathan Kaib has found this same com…

image: Image of comet C/2014 B1 (Scwartz) taken with the 2.5-meter Nordic Optical Telescope. This long-period comet's orbit lies exterior to Saturn's, yet it exhibited cometary activity during its mo… [+4452 chars]

full article...