All upcoming Inside Science: Our Universe programs

In the distant past, people were both awed and alarmed by comets. We now know that comets are leftovers from the dawn of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. They may yield important clues about the solar system’s formation. Carey Lisse, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, highlights what we know about comets and what we are still hoping to find out.

Pluto was the first object discovered in the Kuiper Belt, which contains hundreds of thousands of other icy bodies. Their orbits provide us with a good deal of information about our solar system. Samantha Lawler, an astronomy professor at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, details how meticulous observations and simulations are being carried out and how future observations are under threat.