Euclid Yeni Kuyruklu Yıldız Buldu: 3 Seviyede İngilizce Haber

Euclid is a space telescope from Europe. It takes pictures of faraway galaxies. Last month it found something new: a comet.

The European Space Agency (ESA) shared the news on 19 October 2026. The comet was in pictures from September 2026. Nobody knew about this comet before.

A university student found the comet. The student's name is Mikko Pöntinen. He studies at the University of Helsinki. He wrote his own computer program. The program looks for moving things in pictures. It saw a line across several images. Something was moving very fast.

Around the object there was a soft cloud. This cloud was dust and gas. So the object was an active comet.

On 8 October, experts said: yes, this is a comet. They gave it a name: C/2026 S1 (Euclid).

The comet is very far away. It is about 1.3 billion kilometres from Earth. It goes around the Sun very slowly. One trip takes thousands of years.

This news was a big surprise. Euclid does not usually look for comets. It studies galaxies, dark matter and dark energy. But this time, it found a new visitor too.

Euclid, Europe's space telescope, was built to study distant galaxies. However, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), it has now discovered something much closer to home: its first previously unknown comet.

ESA announced the news on 19 October 2026. The comet appeared in Euclid images taken between 16 and 24 September. It was spotted by Mikko Pöntinen, a PhD student at the University of Helsinki. He used software that he had written himself to search the images for moving objects.

At first, the program picked up a streak across several images, which meant something was moving fast. In the end, Pöntinen found the object in five sets of images, 16 exposures in total. A fuzzy cloud surrounded it, showing that it was an active comet giving off dust and gas.

Because the object did not match anything in the catalogues of known comets and asteroids, it was reported to the Minor Planet Center. On 8 October, the center confirmed it was a comet and named it C/2026 S1 (Euclid).

The comet is about 1.3 billion kilometres from Earth. According to Sci.News, it travels high above the flat plane of the planets, on an orbit that takes thousands of years. Scientists will work out the exact period after more observations.

The discovery came as a surprise. Euclid normally avoids the dusty part of the sky where most comets are found, and it usually photographs each area only once. That is why finding a comet was such a happy coincidence. Although the comet is not a good target for ESA's future Comet Interceptor mission, it gave the Euclid and Comet Interceptor teams a useful test of working together.

Euclid was never meant to be a comet hunter. The European Space Agency's telescope was designed to take deep, steady images of galaxies billions of light-years away, yet on 19 October 2026 ESA announced that it had stumbled upon its first previously unknown comet.

The credit goes to Mikko Pöntinen, a PhD student at the University of Helsinki who works with the Euclid Consortium's Solar System Objects Science Working Group. Sifting through images captured between 16 and 24 September, his home-made detection software flagged a faint streak running across several frames, the telltale sign of a fast-moving object. Pöntinen eventually tracked it through five image sets comprising 16 exposures, and the fuzzy haze enveloping it left little doubt: this was an active comet, shedding dust and gas as it travelled.

With no match in existing catalogues of comets and asteroids, the object was reported to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which confirmed it on 8 October and gave it the official designation C/2026 S1 (Euclid). It currently lies some 1.3 billion kilometres from Earth, comparable, ESA says, to the distance from the Sun to a point between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. According to Sci.News, the comet does not share the flat plane of the planets but loops high above the Solar System on an orbit lasting thousands of years; its precise period will only become clear after follow-up observations.

What makes the find remarkable is how heavily the odds were stacked against it. Euclid deliberately steers clear of the dusty band of sky where most comets and asteroids gather, and it typically photographs each patch of sky just once. Its real business is dark matter and dark energy: over six years it will map the shapes and movements of billions of galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away.

The comet will not become a target for ESA's planned Comet Interceptor mission. Even so, the discovery offered both teams a valuable dress rehearsal for future cooperation. It also serves as a reminder of what comets really are: icy, dusty leftovers from the birth of the Solar System some 4.6 billion years ago, which grow a glowing coma and a long tail as they approach the Sun.