Photo: Peering Into Comets, Finding More of the Same

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Observations of the SW 3 comet, above, suggest that comets may have less diverse chemical compositions than thought.

Comets are dirty snowballs of ice, gas, and dust that may hold the keys to answering how our solar system formed from a giant cloud of gas and dust some 4.5 billion years ago.

Photograph courtesy NASA, ESA, H. H. Weaver (JHU/APL)

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