Will Comet Hartley 2 spawn a new meteor shower?

It’s very unlikely, but two intriguing pieces of evidence point to Hartley 2, the comet of the moment,  as a possible source of two recent bright fireballs seen over Canada and the southeastern U.S. On Oct. 16, two NASA all-sky cameras (more)...

Comet Hartley sports a short tail extending to the lower right in this photo taken earlier this month. Credit: Michael Jaeger

Scientists Watch for a "Hartley-id" Meteor Shower

This month, Comet Hartley 2 has put on a good show for backyard astronomers. The comet’s vivid green atmosphere and auburn tail of dust look great through small telescopes, and NASA’s Deep Impact/EPOXI probe is about to return even more dramatic pictures when it flies past the comet’s nucleus on Nov. 4th. (more)...

This image of comet Hartley 2 was captured by amateur astronomer Byron Bergert on Oct. 6 in Gainesville, Florida using a 106 mm Takahashi astrograph. Image credit: Byron Berger