On July 27th astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, quickly reprogrammed Hubble to search for the missing comet. Astronomer Hal Weaver said he was stunned when he first saw the Hubble image. They looked like a shower of glowing fireballs from fireworks. Other comets make a trip around the sun much more often. But on each trip they lose material as the sun heats and melts them.
Astronomers believe that most comets eventually just disintegrate and disappear.
A steroid R esearch program which discovered the comet. The path comets travel as they zip around the sun can be described mathematically, based on the same physical laws of gravitation that hold the Earth in orbit around the Sun or the Space Shuttle in orbit around the Earth.