73p/schwassmann-wachmann 3

Originally posted by Aimless Searcher
Can someone clarify for me why the drastic differences are there? Use simple words, please...

As it breaks up more and more, the orbit becomes more erratic in its orbit. The orbit also takes awhile to track, and isn't an instant known thing. As Regenmacher stated above...

The longshot and least likely distance is 0.00010 AU.

Odds: N-sigma of 3 means a 99.7% chance the true miss distance will be greater than the minimum miss distance.

The most likely is the Nominal Miss Distance at 33.7 LD/0.0867 AU. Give them some more time to get a fix on 3-BD and that wide variance will narrow.

Originally posted by firebat
Anyways, do we have until the 25th?

Well, the fragments that are going by on the 25th will be farther away. The 3-BD fragment is coming the closest, and that's on the 11th.

Yikes.

I don't 100% believe anything bad will happen but after hearing all the talk of this one, it does make me wonder... what happens if something does happen and I'm not prepared? However farfetched the idea is, I think it's wise to at least have some sort of minimal preparation. And this doesn't even just go for comets... it goes for everything else like riots, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, asteroids, nuclear war, blizzards, civil war, alien-invasions, polar-shifts, ice ages... and terrorists.

It won't hit us. I'll be quite amazed if anything larger than a grain of sand hits our atmosphere.

That being said, if you want an idea of what would happen, read Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer.

As it breaks up more and more, the orbit becomes more erratic in its orbit. The orbit also takes awhile to track, and isn't an instant known thing. As Regenmacher stated above...

So, the pieces sort of scatter, but follow the original flight path (if I can call it that) because it's like a shotgun shell impetus...the smaller pieces will travel in the same direction of the initial shot, although spread out over time.

While I don't shoot often, I understand trajectories somewhat. This is why it's most likely not going to strike us...because of the original trajectory, right?

However, you stated that the orbit becomes more erratic over time and with additional pieces fracturing off. While I've never heard of a trajectory going so far back as to hit the original shooter, that distance is far smaller than what we're talking about here.

What would the factors be, then, to "re-direct" the debris (broken fragments) into our atmosphere? Gravity? Forward movement/momentum? Speed and perihelion (I'm not even sure what that means, but it sounds good...LOL).

And if the closest pass will be fragment B, which is likely around the 11th of May, and it's already the 5th, when do you figure "they" will know something a bit more concrete?

Sorry for all the questions...and I really appreciate your earlier answer. Thanks! I'm just really curious about all this. I'm generally prepared for most possible stuff (I live in eq country), so I'm not panicked about this whatsoever...just simply trying to understand something which apparently doesn't happen all too often.

Thanks again for any response!

Regards-
Aimless

I get so confused about this with all the tech specs. I'm reading everywhere I can about this comet on the net lately. Some examples, I'm sure, have been estimating from the surface of the Earth to the celestial object. Someone somewhere said the estimated distance is not measured from the surface of the earth. It's measured from the core of earth. So I keep hearing about this BD fragment coming the closest as of what has been detected as of yet. I still don't know if that's true. Also what about this astroid (GY2?) coming pretty close too? It's trajectory intercepts BD I heard. Could it possibly knock the debris or fragments depending on their size, like a white cue ball hitting the 8 ball in the corner pocket... changing the course already estimated for BD? What makes it worse on predicting courses is the comet fragments are still breaking up if I'm correct.

I hope we don't get hit, I'm going to the Grand Canyon in June.

Unless we get a new canyon to go visit.

This is the latest animation from the SOHO swan, does anybody know what those two fragments are and where they are going? Soon they will be out of the field of vision.
Does anyone know what this means?

sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

This might or might not be irrelevant. Not for me to say. NOTE: # 1 was discovered about three years before # 3.

Going over some old notes recently I found a passage I’d forgotten about. It’s from an article titled “Saturn –Riddle of the Rings” that appeared in the Nat’l Geographic magazine (July 1981, p. 28), and it says, “One comet known as Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, whose orbit keeps it between Jupiter and Saturn, periodically explodes for no known reason. Perhaps something sparks a pocket of unstable gas within.” The full name is "29p/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1".

The reason they had for bringing up that matter in an article about Saturn is too involved to go into. It had to do with the idea that the moons of Saturn, while not geologically active, could be chemically active, which implies chemical volcanism, with explosions of gas and dust like that comet’s, rather than our kind, arising from a molten interior and sliding tectonic plates.

Moreover, ten years later, on Feb. 12, 1991, a team of Belgian astronomers noticed on a receding Comet Halley (last approach: 1985-86), which was already between Saturn and Uranus, a huge eruption that increased its luminosity about a thousandfold. By then it was tailless once again, of course, and a mere speck of light. A big cloud burst forth.

At that distance from the Sun comets have a temperature of about minus 200 degrees Cent., which made it hard to come up with an explanation. The two most plausible ones: 1) that it had collided with a meteoroid, and, more likely, 2) that a pocket of carbon monoxide (CO), a compound that can vaporize at very low temperatures, exploded under the surface.

Other sources say it’s carbon dioxide (CO2) ice and methane (CH4) ice that are involved, that the explosions are due to the solar radiation heating and vaporizing these ice deposits, and that consequently very few comets at distances greater than six astronomical units (150 million km. x 6) display this kind of activity.

…so maybe here’s an additional reason for the eventual demise of a comet, apart from its losing a lot of matter every time a star heats it up: fitful bursts.

…and a few questions for the pros: how many comets have been caught showing these bursts, when was this first seen, and can they be strong enough to destroy the comet instantly or a few hours later?
*

Well, it's one day out from passing and I'm amused that NASA still has the BD fragment listed as .04 LD as a minimum and the nominal hasn't changed either. So it's 7 million miles out or 8 thousand miles. Or anywhere in between. Is the trajectory that erratic or do they just not update their site that often?

UPDATE: To add to the fun NEO 2006 JY26 passes through the same area today at 1.1 LD and 2006 HC2 is moving through at 38 LD. I wonder if this could have any effect on the coment fragments. I couldn't help but notice that the nominal and minimal distances on these objects are really close. Obviously they are dumbfounded on what the comet fragments are going to do.


[edit on 10-5-2006 by dbates]

Originally posted by AGENT_T
really sorry. 'lost the link in my history' 1 day' doh!! it,s widely accepted that 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 will miss by at least 4 million miles but the problem is there is another 1100m asteroid passing by that could collide with the comet slowing and sending fragments down to earth. its called '2006gy2 or sumthin. lost the link cos i had 2 go 2 work. but i,ll find it

ok its asteroid 2006 gy2. still findin the link

[edit on 21-4-2006 by AGENT_T]

Been tryin to find out for a while now