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Post by moabiter on Jun 11, 2010 9:20:55 GMT -8
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Post by moabiter on Jun 13, 2010 13:35:23 GMT -8
Comet McNaught closest to Earth next week 2010-06-11 12:40:00 If you look towards the northeastern sky before sunrise June 15, the recently discovered comet McNaught will be closest to Earth and visible to the naked eye. The comet will appear as a dim and diffuse circular patch of light gliding through the constellation of Perseus in the northern sky. It has been brightening rapidly as it approaches Earth for a 100-million-mile close encounter. 'Comet McNaught has a vivid green head and a long wispy tail that looks great through small telescopes. By the end of the month it could be visible to the naked eye perhaps as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper,' said N.S. Raghunandan Kumar, general secretary, Planetary Society, India. The Big Dipper is an alignment of seven stars known in ancient Indian astronomy as 'Sapta Rishi' or 'The Seven Great Sages'. According to scientists, this is the comet's first visit to the inner solar system, so predictions of future brightness are necessarily uncertain. Comet McNaught was discovered in September 2009 by Robert McNaught at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory while conducting a search for potentially dangerous near-Earth objects. sify.com/news/comet-mcnaught-closest-to-earth-next-week-news-national-kglmEciacce.html______________________________ McNaught will appear brighter as it approaches Earth for a close encounter on June 15th and 16th. The orbit of the comet is hyperbolic, meaning the present apparition is its first visit and that the comet shall never return. www.ptinews.com/news/712150_Comet-McNaught-to-brighten-up-night-sky
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Post by moabiter on Oct 21, 2010 7:55:37 GMT -8
Comet 103P/Hartley 2 - 20 October 2010TIME TO SEE COMET HARTLEY: For backyard stargazers, now is the best time to see green Comet 103P/Hartley 2 as it approaches Earth for an 11-million-mile close encounter on Oct. 20th. "I observed Comet Hartley 2 at dawn on October 20, 2010, at its closest approach to Earth," says amateur astronomer Alan Dyer, who sends this picture from a dark-sky site near Cluny, Alberta, Canada. www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=20&month=10&year=2010
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Post by clone on Oct 21, 2010 16:18:15 GMT -8
SUNDIVER - 19 Oct 2010Chinese comet hunter Bo Zhou found the sundiver on Oct. 19th in SOHO coronagraph images. Heated by intensifying solar radiation, the icy comet has brightened 100-fold since Zhou's discovery to approximately 1st magnitude.
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Post by clone on Nov 4, 2010 19:27:36 GMT -8
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Post by clone on Nov 8, 2010 18:58:27 GMT -8
NEW COMET IKEYA-MURAKAMI: Newly-discovered comet C/2010 V1 (Ikeya-Murakami) is putting on a good show for anyone with a backyard telescope and an alarm clock. The clock is for getting up before dawn, and the telescope is for seeing this: spaceweather.com/
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Post by clone on Nov 15, 2010 6:52:10 GMT -8
another one bites the dust. Japanese comet hunter Masanori Uchina first noticed the sundiver in coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Nov. 13th. At the time it was a dim and distant speck, but it rapidly brightened on Nov. 14th as it approached the hot sun. Now it is just a dissipating haze of vapor and comet dust. The comet was likely a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after a 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet at least 2000 years ago. Several of these fragments are thought to pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see but occasionally a bigger fragment like this one attracts attention. www.spaceweather.com/
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Post by May29 on May 23, 2011 19:09:29 GMT -8
The new near-Sun asteroid May 22nd, 2011 Spanish sky survey La Sagra discovered a new object with temporary designation 15LB160. This asteroid is likely to be classified as potentially hazardous (PHA), the minimum distance of the intersection of its orbit with the orbit of Earth is 0.044 AU, body diameter about 450 meters. spaceobs.org/en/2011/05/22/the-new-near-sun-asteroid/Asteroid 2011 KE, an Apollo NEA, calculated to make earth close approach 2011-May-29 02:18 ± 00:30 UT at nominal distance 0.07AU. Unusual high eccentricity 0.95.
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Post by clone on May 25, 2011 20:07:02 GMT -8
Sundiver May 10-11SUNDIVING COMET: A comet just discovered by amateur astronomer Sergey Shurpakov is diving past the sun today, and it will probably not survive. Click here to view a movie of the death plunge recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory--and check back for updates in the hours ahead. spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=11&month=05&year=2011
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Post by clone on Aug 13, 2011 20:27:44 GMT -8
Worried About Comet Elenin? FAQs from Ian Musgrave July 20, 2011 Earlier this week, Ian’s Elenin posts on his Astroblog were taken down by the web host, as someone filed a claim for alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). “Given that there is no copyrighted material on these pages, with either material generated entirely by me or links to and citation of publicly available material, I believe this was just a frivolous attack on people countering Elenin nonsense” Ian said. Astroblog was not the only site that was targeted, and thankfully, Ian’s web host agreed that the claim was without merit, and the posts are back online. In the interim, however, Universe Today offered to publish Ian’s excellent “Comet Elenin, a FAQ for the Worried” post, and even though the original is now available again, Ian and I decided to still post this on UT so that more people with questions about Comet Elenin would have the chance to have their worries allayed. Have your questions answered below. Will Comet Elenin Hit Earth?No, its closest approach is 0.23 AU on Oct 16, 2011, where 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. To put this in perspective, this is only a little closer than the closest approach of Venus to Earth, and roughly 100 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. This distance is from the latest MPEC ephemeris which is based on over 100 observations from multiple observatories that have been continuously tracking the comet, so it won’t change appreciably. Surely if Elenin Was Going to Hit the Earth NASA/the Government Would Hush it Up?Which government? The Australian Government, the UK Government? The Italian Government? The South African Government? Amateur astronomers world wide are following this comet and continually talking to each other. The have the programs to work out where the comet is going. If the comet was coming anywhere near us, the amateur community would be first to know, and there is no keeping them quiet. Consider how wide spread the information is about Apophis, which is a real, if extremely marginal, hazard. But I Can See a Picture of it in WikiSky, it’s HUGE! That is the carbon star CW Leonis. Why Can’t I Find Information of Elenin at the NASA Website?Because NASA is not the arbiter of all things astronomical. You won’t find information on C/2009 P1, C/2011 C1 or any of the faint comets discovered during 2010 and 2011. NASA does have information of comets that its spacecraft have visited, or are interesting in some other way, but it’s not an exhaustive comet site like Cometography cometography.com/current_comets.html or Aerith www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.htmlMore: www.universetoday.com/87619/worried-about-comet-elenin-faqs-from-ian-musgrave/
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Post by clone on Aug 13, 2011 20:29:07 GMT -8
Comet Garradd on Aug. 1. 2011 as seen from Australia. Credit: Peter Lake. Throughout the next couple of months, Comet Garradd will get higher and brighter and cut through the Summer Triangle north of Altair. By September, it will drop lower in the west but remain visible in the evening sky until year’s end for observers at mid-northern latitudes. Comet Garradd will peak in brightness late next February at around 6th magnitude, so it could be visible with the naked eye if you have really dark skies. Closest approach to Earth happens next March 5, when Garradd will be 117.7 million miles away. At that time, the comet will be seen flying though the Little Dipper. Other comets are also currently falling towards the Sun and brightening as they get closer include C/2010 X1 (Elenin), expected to peak near magnitude six in early September, 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova expected to peak brighten past magnitude eight in mid-August, and C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) which may become visible to the unaided eye during the early months of 2013. www.universetoday.com/87955/now-in-the-night-sky-comet-garradd/
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Post by clone on Sept 7, 2011 19:25:13 GMT -8
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Post by clone on Oct 5, 2011 17:57:03 GMT -8
Did a Comet Hit Cause an Explosion on the Sun? October 3, 2011 This amazing video from the SOHO mission (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) shows a sun-diving comet hitting the solar surface on October 1, 2011 and unexpectedly a huge explosion occurs shortly after. Are the two events related? Probably not, but solar scientists don’t know for sure. The region where the CME originated was on the opposite side of the Sun from the comet hit, so that is very great distance. Scientists say there is no known mechanism for comets to trigger a CME. www.universetoday.com/89433/did-a-comet-hit-cause-an-cme-on-the-sun/Comet Hits the Sun -- Spawns Explosion? www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVuuIMVDyIFARSIDE CME: Yesterday, October 4th, something exploded on the far side of the sun and propelled a spectacular CME into space. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the cloud as it emerged from behind the sun's limb: www.spaceweather.com/
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Post by clone on Oct 24, 2011 19:36:58 GMT -8
COMET CORPSE: "Doomsday Comet" Elenin was briefly famous for inaccurate predictions that it might hit Earth. Instead it disintegrated as it approached the sun last month. (Doomsday canceled.) Over the weekend, Italian astronomer Rolando Ligustri spotted the comet's remains. It's the elongated cloud in this Oct. 22nd photo of the star field where Elenin would have appeared if it were still intact: spaceweather.com/
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Post by lovejoy sungrazer on Dec 14, 2011 14:01:28 GMT -8
SIGNIFICANT COMET PLUNGES TOWARD THE SUN: A comet nearly as wide as two football fields (200m) is plunging toward the sun where it will most likely be destroyed in a spectacular light show on Dec. 15/16. Although Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) could become as bright as Jupiter or Venus when it "flames out," the glare of the sun will hide the event from human eyes. Solar observatories in space, however, will have a grand view. NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft recorded the comet's approach on Dec. 11: "You can clearly see the comet heading diagonally through the images," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab who prepared the animation. "During the 16-hour sequence, the comet brightens from magnitude +8 to +6.5, approximately." It will soon grow much brighter. "This comet is a true sungrazer, and will skim approximately 140,000 km (1.2 solar radii) above the solar surface on Dec. 15/16," notes Battams. At such close range, solar heating will almost certainly destroy the icy interloper,creating a cloud of vapor and comet dust that will reflect lots of sunlight. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) will have a particularly good view. Discovered on Dec. 2nd by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Australia, the comet is an unusually large member of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments of a single giant comet (probably the Great Comet of 1106) that broke apart back in the 12th century. SOHO sees one plunging into the sun every few days, but most are small, no more than 10 meters wide. Comet Lovejoy is at least ten times larger than usual. www.spaceweather.com/
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