7 stunning comet visuals captured by NASA

Giotto, a European spacecraft, captured the potato-shaped nucleus of Comet Halley in 1986, which sheds ice and rock into space, causing annual meteor showers.

NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows comet ISON intact despite predictions of its icy nucleus disintegrating. The small nucleus, symmetric head, and polar jet of dust are unresolved. The comet is predicted to approach Earth on December 26.9 million miles.

NASA's NEOWISE mission captured images of comet C/2012 K1, also known as Pan-STARRS, passing a distant spiral galaxy, NGC 3726. The images were captured using two infrared channels onboard the spacecraft.

NASA's NEOWISE mission captured an image of Comet C/2014 Q2, a brightest comet in Earth's sky in early 2015, spanning half of one degree and showing it moving mostly west and slightly south.

NASA's NEOWISE space telescope captured infrared images of comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto, a long-period comet from the Oort Cloud. The comet appears as a string of red dots, with stars and cooler dust glowing red.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission discovered Comet C/2020 F3 as a string of fuzzy red dots in heat-sensitive infrared images. 

This animation shows a comet approaching the inner solar system, heated by Sun light, vaporizing ices, forming a giant coma, and blowing out dust particles.