Image Credit:NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Its swift motion is captured in this time-lapse movie made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013, by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the time the images were taken, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span and compresses this into just five seconds. The comet travels 34,000 miles in this brief video, or 7 percent of the distance between Earth and the moon. The deep-space visitor streaks silently against the background stars.

Unlike a firework, the comet is not combusting, but in fact is pretty cold. Its skyrocket-looking tail is really a streamer of gas and dust bleeding off the icy nucleus, which is surrounded by a bright star-like-looking coma. The pressure of the solar wind sweeps the material into a tail, like a breeze blowing a windsock.

via Comet ISON Brings Holiday Fireworks | NASA.

Image: Tsenki TV

A Russian rocket crash July 1 was likely caused by an emergency shutdown of the booster’s engines 17 seconds into the flight, according to news reports.

The unmanned Russian Proton-M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstanat 10:38 p.m. EDT (0238 GMT). The crash of the 17-story booster destroyed three onboard navigation satellites, which were worth almost $200 million. Video of the rocket crash from Russian state-run Rossiya-24 television shows the vehicle veering off course shortly after liftoff, and then breaking apart in mid-air and exploding in a fiery blaze once it hit the ground.

via Russian Rocket Crash Details Revealed: Scientific American.

Courtesy of SiriusB, via WikiMedia Commons

NOVA Lab’s Sun Lab gives citizen scientists the opportunity to learn about the Sun and the weather this churning mass of superhot plasma creates. Sun Lab explores what makes the Sun so volatile and gives citizen scientists access to the same data, images and tools that scientists use to predict solar storms.

via NOVA Sun Lab, Citizen Science | Scientific American.