Comets


Meteor

NASA Cameras Spot Meteors From Mystery Comet

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© NASA/MSFC/B. CookeCamelopardalids meteors from Oct. 5, 2010.
It's a strange-sounding name for a constellation, coming from the Greco-Roman word for giraffe, or "camel leopard". The October Camelopardalids are a collection of faint stars that have no mythology associated with them - in fact, they didn't begin to appear on star charts until the 17th century.

Even experienced amateur astronomers are hard-pressed to find the constellation in the night sky. But in early October, it comes to prominence in the minds of meteor scientists as they wrestle with the mystery of this shower of meteors, which appears to radiate from the giraffe's innards.

The October Camelopardalids are not terribly spectacular, with only a handful of bright meteors seen on the night of Oct. 5. It may have been first noticed back in 1902, but definite confirmation had to wait until Oct. 2005, when meteor cameras videotaped 12 meteors belonging to the shower.

Moving at a speed of 105,000 miles per hour, Camelopardalids ablate, or burn up, somewhere around 61 miles altitude, according to observations from the NASA allsky meteor cameras on the night of Oct. 5, 2010.

Meteor

Comet Hartley And The Double Cluster

Comet 103P/Hartley 2 continues to put on a good show as it approaches Earth for an 11-million-mile close encounter on Oct. 20th. Last night it passed by the Double Cluster in Perseus. The contrast between the blue stars of the two clusters and the green atmosphere of the comet was remarkable:

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© Michael Jäger of Stixendorf, Austria
Most observers agree that the comet is not yet visible to the naked eye, but it is an easy target for backyard telescopes. In recent nights, astronomers have enjoyed watching Comet Hartley 2 pass a succession of stars and deep-sky objects such as the Pacman nebula and the Double Cluster. Next up is eta Persei (η Per), a 4th-magnitude star that will shine through the comet's atmosphere on Oct 9th and 10th. Details and a sky map are available from from Sky & Telescope.

Telescope

Passing Through Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 Dazzles October 20

Green comet 103P/Hartley 2 is approaching Earth for a close encounter on Oct. 20th. At that time, the comet will be only 11 million miles from Earth and should be dimly visible to the naked eye from dark sky sites. It already looks great through backyard telescopes:

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© Rolando Ligustri
Amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri took this picture on Oct. 1st using a 14-inch Global Rent-a-Scope in New Mexico. It shows Comet Hartley beside the spectacular Pacman Nebula (NGC 281), a star-forming cloud some ten thousand light years from Earth. "This is a very nice comet for telescopes and binoculars," says Martin Gembec who took a similar picture from his backyard observatory in the Czech Republic last night. "It has a [green atmosphere] almost 0.5 degrees wide and shines like a 7th magnitude star."

Two weeks after Comet Hartley has its close encounter with Earth, NASA will have a close encounter with the comet. The EPOXI spacecraft (formerly known as Deep Impact) is hurtling toward Comet Hartley now, and on Nov. 4th it will fly 435 miles from the comet's active icy nucleus. The encounter will mark only the fifth time in history that a spacecraft has been close enough to image a comet's core.

Telescope

Among The Stars Of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 Approaches Earth

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© NASA/MSFC/Bill Cooke, NASA's Meteoroid Environment OfficeA pale green interloper among the stars of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 shines in this four-minute exposure taken on the night of Sept. 28, 2010, by NASA astronomer Bill Cooke.
Still too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, the comet was 18 million miles away from Earth at the time. Cooke took this image using a telescope located near Mayhill, N.M., which he controlled via the Internet from his home computer in Huntsville, Ala.

Comet-watching from the comfort of your living room? Modern astronomy is truly amazing...

Comet 103P/Hartley 2, a small periodic comet, was discovered in 1986 by Malcolm Hartley, an Australian astronomer. It orbits the sun about every 6.5 years, and on Oct. 20, the comet will make its closest approach to Earth since its discovery.

Meteor

SOTT Focus: Disclosure and Comets

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With all the rumblings about 'Disclosure' going on all around, I can't help but wonder why those who are interested in this topic seem to be missing the biggest cover-up of all: cometary/asteroid disruptors/destroyers of history.

Destroying history means, of course, destroying large segments of the human population who pass history on to their offspring. When you find a blank spot in history, a discontinuity, you can pretty well figure out that something really awful must have happened.

I've recently been wading through the complete works of Anatoly Fomenko. Those of you who have read my book The Secret History of the World know that I referred to him and his theories, but this was based on the available articles about it in English at the time. I've now been gifted with volumes 1 through 4 of his 7 volume work, along with the images from the final three volumes which are still being translated. It's a real revelation.

Meteor

Comet Hartley 2 Approaches Earth

Comet Hartley 2
© NASA/MSFC/Bill Cooke, NASA's Meteoroid Environment OfficeComet Hartley 2 approaches Earth at a distance of 18 million miles, seen on Sept. 28, 2010.
A pale green interloper among the stars of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 shines in this four-minute exposure taken on the night of Sept. 28, 2010, by NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. Still too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, the comet was 18 million miles away from Earth at the time. Cooke took this image using a telescope located near Mayhill, N.M., which he controlled via the Internet from his home computer in Huntsville, Ala. Comet-watching from the comfort of your living room? Modern astronomy is truly amazing...

Comet 103P/Hartley 2, a small periodic comet, was discovered in 1986 by Malcolm Hartley, an Australian astronomer. It orbits the sun about every 6.5 years, and on Oct. 20, the comet will make its closest approach to Earth since its discovery. In this case, "close" means 11 million miles, or 17.7 million kilometers. A moonless sky will make for promising viewing conditions in the northeastern skies, especially just before dawn.

Meteor

Mini-Ice Age Debate Rocking Geology World: Do Comets Cause Ice Ages?

Comets are believed by some experts to have wiped out megafauna species

The normally peaceable world of geology is currently alive with a fiery debate over the theory that deadly space rocks slammed into Northern Canada about 13,000 years ago, triggering a mini-Ice Age and the eventual extinction of the woolly mammoth and a host of other prehistoric species.

That contentious hypothesis - which has prompted a number of studies in recent years probing sites throughout North America for traces of the alleged extraterrestrial blast -is under renewed attack after a team of U.S. and British researchers published a paper last week arguing that previous claims of impact evidence are demonstrably mistaken.

The new study takes particular aim at several supposed discoveries of "nanodiamonds" at sites around North America -hailed by advocates of the impact theory as proof that a cosmic blast sent showers of "shocked" rock particles across the continent 13,000 years ago.

Meteor

Chilled Diamonds Shine Light on Comet Collision

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© James KennettJames Kennett, along with ETH Zurich researcher Gerald Haug, cut into the ice sheet in Greenland to retrieve samples from the glacial layers. The ice sheets serve as a striated window into the Earth’s past.
Scientists Brave Icy Environment to Find Evidence of Cosmic Cataclysm

A grueling journey across the ice sheets of Greenland has paid off for a team of scientists, who have located some diamonds in the rough glacial climate.

The 21-person team, which included UCSB professor emeritus James Kennett and his son, University of Oregon geology professor Douglas Kennett, recently published a paper in the Journal of Glaciology on their discovery of nano-sized diamonds in the ice sheet in a location near the city of Kangerlussuaq.

According to James Kennett, the expedition involved traversing a good amount of difficult terrain, as the ice sheets of Greenland are significantly remote.

"The area is cold, remote and [mostly] inaccessible," James Kennett said. "Looking for a potential layer of diamonds in an ice sheet is like trying to find a needle in a haystack."

Meteor

Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse

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© Unknown
. . . and from heaven a great star shall fall on the dread ocean and burn up the deep sea, with Babylon itself and the land of Italy, by reason of which many of the Hebrews perished,

. . . Be afraid, ye Indians and high-hearted Ethiopians: for when the fiery wheel of the ecliptic(?) . . . and Capricorn . . . and Taurus among the Twins encircles the mid-heaven, when the Virgin ascending and the Sun fastening the girdle round his forehead dominates the whole firmament; there shall be a great conflagration from the sky, falling on the earth;
Are these lines from Book V of the Sibylline Oracles eschatological nonsense? Contemporary astronomical evidence suggests a historic basis for words describing cosmic calamity. British astronomers, Victor Clube and Bill Napier, in The Cosmic Winter (1990) and other recent works, provide students of the past with newly discovered celestial clues which indicate that Earth has been periodically pelleted with comet fragments throughout the Holocene period. The evidence for the break-up of a large (> 50 km), short period (approximately 3.3 years), Earth-orbit-crossing comet is substantial and should be considered as hard as anything a trowel might turn up. What astronomical information cannot convey is the actual effect these periodic bombardment episodes had on human culture; only further digging and sifting will illuminate that aspect.

Meteor

Mercury's comet-like appearance spotted by satellites looking at the Sun

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© NASA
Scientists from Boston University's Center for Space Physics reported today that NASA satellites designed to view the escaping atmosphere of the Sun have also recorded evidence of escaping gas from the planet Mercury. The STEREO mission has two satellites placed in the same orbit around the Sun that the Earth has, but at locations ahead and behind it. This configuration offers multi-directional views of the electrons and ions that make up the escaping solar wind. On occasion, the planet Mercury appears in the field of view of one or both satellites.

In addition to its appearance as a bright disk of reflected sunlight, a "tail" of emission can be seen in some of the images. Announcing this new method of observing Mercury and trying to understand the nature of the gases that might make up this tail feature were the topics presented at the European Planetary Science Congress meeting in Rome today.

It has been known that Mercury exhibits comet-like features, with a coma of tenuous gas surrounding the planet and a very long tail extending in the anti-sunward direction. From Earth, observations of both of these features can be done using light from sodium gas sputtered off the surface of Mercury. The Sun's radiation pressure then pushes many of the sodium atoms in the anti-solar direction creating a tail that extends many hundreds of times the physical size of Mercury.