Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks explodes and sprouts 'horns'

Space Weather
Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:41 UTC

A comet with horns? Believe it. On July 20th, something on the surface of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks exploded, increasing its brightness 100-fold. Debris from the outburst looks like this:

"Here is a quick view of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks taken last night between some high clouds," reports Thomas Wildoner of Weatherly, PA. "Just in the last several days, this comet has gone from a star-like appearance to brightening by five magnitudes and now sporting a coma in the shape of two horns."

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is famous for exploding. Discovered in 1812 by Pons and discovered again in 1883 by Brooks, the bursty comet visits the inner solar system every 71 years. Since the 19th century at least 7 significant outbursts have been observed, suggesting that it might be a cryovolcanic comet like 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann.

The comet is currently beyond the orbit of Mars, but falling toward the sun for a close encounter in April 2024. At that time it is expected to become a naked-eye object at 4th or 5th magnitude. Given its history of outbursts, however, the moment of easy visibility could come sooner.

Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor developments. Comet 12P is currently crossing the head of Draco not far from the north celestial pole. With an astronomical magnitude of +11, it is an easy target for mid-sized backyard telescopes. Check out those horns! And submit your photos here.

Comment: For fascinating insight into this phenomena, and more, check out the following articles:

Of note regarding the above, is the similarities between asteroids, comets, and even planets; as Pierre Lescaudron writes in Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection:

Traces of this movement can be found in the late 19th century,when Scientific American published an article stating that Professor Zollner of Leipzig ascribed the 'self-luminosity' of comets to 'electrical excitement.' Zollner proposed that:
...the nuclei of comets, as masses, are subject to gravitation, while the vapors developed from them, which consist of very small particles, yield to the action of the free electricity of the sun
Then, regarding comet tails, the August 11^th 1882 issue of English Mechanic and World of Science included the following:
There seems to be a rapidly growing feeling amongst physicists that both the self-light of comets and the phenomena of their tails belong to the order of electrical phenomena.
In 1896, Nature published an article stating:
It has long been imagined that the phenomenon of comet's tails are in some way due to a solar electrical repulsion, and additional light is thrown on this subject by recent physical researches.
[...]

So, comets don't seem to be dirty snowballs after all. From the data presented above, they are glowing chunks of rock. On the other side, asteroids don't seem to be the non-glowing chunks of rocks posited by mainstream science. For example asteroids P/2013 P5 recently puzzled the whole scientific community when it started exhibiting a million miles long glowing tail. To rationalize this oddity official science claimed the asteroid was spinning so fast that it was ejecting tons of dust, while acknowledging that finally the difference between 'comets' and 'asteroids' might not be so clear-cut.¹

The fundamental difference between asteroids and comets is not their chemical composition, i.e. dirty, fluffy icy comets vs. rocky asteroids. Rather, as has long been put forward by plasma theorists, what differentiates 'comets' from 'asteroids' is their electric activity.

When the electric potential difference between an asteroid and the surrounding plasma is not too high, the asteroid exhibits a dark discharge mode² or no discharge at all. But when the potential difference is high enough, the asteroid switches to a glowing discharge mode.³ At this point the asteroid is a comet. From this perspective, a comet is simply a glowing asteroid and an asteroid is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then an asteroid, then a comet, etc., depending on variation in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.⁴

Note that a comet can also exhibit the third plasma discharge mode, namely lightning or 'arc discharge mode', which is probably what happened when Comet Shoemaker-Levy entered the vicinity of Jupiter in July 1994:

Note that this comes on the heels of a discovery that Mercury was recently discovered to have a magnificent comet-like tail, and aurora.

The following article from Mr Lescaudron sheds more light on the topic: The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus

And check out SOTT radio's:

Live Science adds more information:

As of July 26, the comet's coma had grown to around 143,000 miles (230,000 kilometers) across, or more than 7,000 times wider than its nucleus, which has an estimated diameter of around 18.6 miles (30 km), Richard Miles, an astronomer with the British Astronomical Association who studies cryovolcanic comets, told Live Science in an email.

The unusual shape of the comet's coma is likely due to an irregularity in the shape of 12P's nucleus, Miles said. The outflowing gas was likely partially obstructed by an out-sticking lobe on the nucleus, which created a "notch" in the expanded coma. As the gas continued to move away from the comet and grow, the notch, or "shadow," became more noticeable, he added. But the expanded coma will eventually disappear as the gas and ice becomes too dispersed to reflect sunlight.

[...]

This is the first major eruption detected from 12P in 69 years, Miles said, mainly because its orbit takes it too far away from Earth for its outbursts to be noticed.
© NASA/Horizons
Orbital path of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks
12P has one of the longest known orbital periods of any comet. It takes around 71 years for the floating volcano to fully orbit the sun, during which time it is catapulted out to the farthest reaches of the solar system. The comet is due to reach its closest point to the sun on April 21, 2024 and make its closest approach to Earth on June 2, 2024, at which point it will be visible in the night sky, Spaceweather.com reported. Earthlings could, therefore, get a front-row seat to more eruptions over the next few years.

In December 2022, astronomers witnessed the largest eruption from 29P in around 12 years, which sprayed around 1 million tons of cryomagma into space. And in April this year, for the first time ever, scientists were able to accurately predict one of 29P's eruptions before it actually happened, thanks to a slight increase in brightness, which suggested more gas was leaking out of the comet's nucleus as it prepared to pop.