I see ice on Comets!

Comet Tempel 1 as impactor strikes

Nucleus of Comet Tempel 1, just as the Impactor from the Deep Impact spacecraft smashed into it, July 4, 2005. Scientists wanted to find out what was beneath the surface. The instruments on the spacecraft found only a little ice on the surface. Most of the ice is inside the nucleus.

Image taken by Deep Impact spacecraft.
Comet Tempel 1, with small blue areas.

Comet Tempel 1, with false color (blue) showing small areas where surface ice was found by the Deep Impact spacecraft.
Comet Linear nucleus is bright spot in center, with glowing orange area spreading over the upper left of image.

Comet Linear appeared in the inner solar system in July 2000. Unexpectedly, the comet broke up and disappeared as it reached its closest point to the Sun.

Comet Hale-Bopp nucleus is bright area, with blue ion tail above white dust tail following off to the right.

Beautiful Comet Hale-Bopp appeared in our skies in 1997. It had very well-defined dust tail (white) and ion tail (blue).

This image is by Brian Kimball of the Longmont Astronomical Society, Longmont, CO.
Comet NEAT nucleus is bright spot with glowing blue and violet in coma and tail trailing above and left in image.

Comet NEAT first appeared in Earth's skies north of the equator in February 2003.

This image was taken at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, in May 2004.