The Anatomy of Comet Hartley-2

At the heart of every comet lies a remnant of the dawn of the Solar System. Or is that remnants?

Astronomers don't know, but the answer would give them a clearer picture of exactly how comets were born eons ago at the birth of the Solar System. Did thin tendrils of dust and ice get drawn slowly inward and pack themselves into a single, uniform mass? Or did a hodge-podge of mini-comets come together to form the core for a comet of substance?

For Hartley-2, the answer so far is neither. "We haven't seen a comet like this before," says Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Hartley-2 could be the first of a new breed."

Both data collected by Mumma's team and detailed images of the comet taken by NASA's EPOXI mission reveal that the comet's core is not uniform. …

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