Comet A3 hasn't been past Earth since the Neanderthals. Your last chance to see it is approaching fast. Here's where and how to spot it.

The “comet of the century” that was likely last seen by the Neanderthals seemed to develop a physics-defying second tail as it reached its closest point to Earth in over 80,000 years.

It has long been assumed that the gases of a comet tail are pushed away from the comet by the pressure of light from the sun. It now appears that many tails are caused by a wind of charged particles ...

Perhaps the most exciting feature of Hale-Bopp is its unique tail. Like most comets, it has two tails that can be seen by the naked eye under the right conditions: a bright dust tail, which is ...

Frost at the Yerkes Observatory saw the comets nucleus as bright as Regulus, the chief star in the Sickle with a tail 5 or 6 degrees in length. Under slightly more favorable circumstances ...

The photo of Comet Hyakutake (left) was taken in March 1996, on the night of its closest approach to earth. That night it was a brilliant fuzzball with a delicate tail that stretched for 70 degrees ...

And high above, comet Hale-Bopp hung suspended like a feathery fishing lure, its tail curving off a bit, as if blown to the side by the punishing wind. One by one, stars winked on in a darkening sky.

The brightest object left of center is the moon, while the faint, wispy tail of comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) can be seen at the far left, just to the right of one of the observatory's telescopes.