Huge comet appears near sun.

Anyone know if the comet's tail will be visible to the naked eye in the early morning or late evening when the sky is darker? This would be interesting to see since I haven't seen too many comets. Good thread.

Originally posted by operation mindcrime
reply to post by kyle43

 

Great find, Kyle

Now i was looking at the SOHO movie theater aswell and couldn't help noticing that the bright white spot to the left probably isn't the comet because it looks pretty stationairy. But if you load the theater with the last 30 images or so you can see something getting closer with every picture. I think that is the comet....

Here's a picture. The red circle on the left is probably the comet.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/5e82d0d40b53b04a.bmp[/atsimg]

Ask Phage about the white spot right of the sun. It probably has something to do with spacedust on the lens or a bake-out, whatever that may be....

Anyway, great find. Star and Flag!!!

Peace


[edit on 2/1/2010 by operation mindcrime]

You make a complete fool of yourself and demonstrate you have NO KNOWLEDGE about the sky and what's happening on it.

Let me explain what the so-called dust you call it is.

It's pretty simple... it's Venus


Source


[edit on 3-1-2010 by DwaynetheSpecious]

There is nothing really uncommon about this SOHO image...
As said, the object to the right is Venus and the object on the lower left is a common comet.

SOHO has discovered over 1500 comets, some of the "sungrazers". There have been past comets that have fallen into the sun, but because comets are mostly ice, it is much more likely that they vaporize completely before hitting the Sun.

No one said what will happen when it collides with the sun. Also what happens to humans if the sun is affected?



[edit on 3-1-2010 by jonnyc55]

How common are comets?
One a year?
One a month?

Wasn't the object coming for us in 2012 meant to come from near the sun? Wasn't it going to be first discovered by an Australian?

Is there any way for the comet to swing around the Sun and be on crash course for Earth?

reply to post by Krusty the Klown

Well this is one klown that hopes it doesn't hit Oz!!!

It would definitely dampen my weekend somewhat!

Well, it's probably no larger than a few meters across.

That's no where near big enough to make it to the ground, especially for cometary material.

Based upon photographic fireball studies, cometary meteoroids have extremely low densities, about 0.8 grams/cc for class IIIA fireballs, and 0.3 grams/cc for class IIIB fireballs. This composition is very fragile and vaporizes so readily when entering the atmosphere, that it is called "friable" material. These meteoroids have virtually no chance of making it to the ground unless an extremely large piece of the comet enters the atmosphere, in which case it would very likely explode at some point in its flight, due to mechanical and thermal stresses.

Source: The American Meteor Society

Even small asteroids, which are made of denser material (and even larger in some cases) don't stand much of a chance against our atmosphere, as recent examples like this one proved:
Midwest megameteor makes media madness

[edit on 3-1-2010 by C.H.U.D.]

reply to post by randyvs

Here's a shot of the sun I took myself. Blow it up and check the out what's on the right.

It's called "glare". Might be a cloud to the right of the Sun in your photograph by the looks of it. You won't be able to see or photograph celestial objects when they are this close to the Sun during daylight. The Sun is simply too bright, and the atmosphere scatters the Sun's light which masks anything that is faint.

reply to post by Devino

A comet only has a tail when it comes into close proximity to the Sun, between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars or less then 5 AUs, because it is a reaction to the solar wind. The tail will ignite and dissipate at around this distance, these tails are electrical reactions and are not simply sublimating ice.

Why are you talking rubbish?

How will a comet tail "ignite" when there is not enough oxygen to sustain combustion?

You do know that Earth is only 1 AU away from the Sun don't you? So why does Earth's atmosphere not ignite?

reply to post by Devino

I don't mean to sound rude but how does gas evaporate?

I think he probably meant to say "ice", which would evaporate much like anywhere else if you bombard it with solar radiation.

The old theory that comets are made of ice is bogus and has been proven wrong many times by NASA, ESA and others by spacecraft that have actually visited and sampled many comets. Almost no water ice has been found yet comets are still called dirty snowballs, go figure.

Sampled "many" comets? Please show the evidence of these "many" comet samples that have been returned to Earth?

I only know of one sample return mission from a comet, and it seems to contradict what you are saying about water:

What we found was remarkable! Instead of rocky materials that formed around previous generations of stars we found that most of the comet's rocky matter formed inside our solar system at extremely high temperature. In great contrast to its ice, our comet's rocky material had formed under white-hot conditions. Even though we confirmed Comets are ancient bodies with an abundance of ice, some of which formed a few tens of degrees above absolute zero at the edge of the solar system, we now know that comets are really a mix of materials made by conditions of both "fire and ice". Comet ice formed in cold regions beyond the planet Neptune but the rocks, probably the bulk of any comet's mass, formed much closer to the Sun in regions hot enough to evaporate bricks. The materials that we collected from comet Wild 2 do contain pre-solar "stardust" grains, identified on the basis of their unusual isotopic composition, but these grains are very, very rare.

Source: NASA

I believe the comet has already hit the sun accordingly to the latest SOHO images, it will be interesting to see if the sun has disturbance on its surface when it rotates earthward!

reply to post by JJay55

How common are comets?
One a year?
One a month?

Comets are in our solar system 24/7. The solar system is teaming with comets, their fragments and their dust, which in some cases finds it's way to us giving us meteor showers.

In fact, we are passing through the tail of a comet tonight when the Quadrantid meteor shower will be peaking, in just a few hours time.

Of course, most comets are faint, and it's only occasionally that you can easily see them in the sky, but you can still observe them if you have a good scope.

Originally posted by JJay55
How common are comets?
One a year?
One a month?

SOHO alone discovered about 1500 comets in less than 10 years
...that's 150 per year or about 12 per month or about 3 per week -- and that's only the ones discovered by SOHO.

Even if this comet is headed towards the Sun (and nobody here has given any evidence that it is), there have been rocky comets and asteroids that have hit then sun in the past (without the Sun being noticeably harmed) -- however, it is much more common for a comet to just evaporate before it hits the Sun.

Welp, she's gone behind the shield.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8e5e730532cb.jpg[/atsimg]

Gather round and place your bet.

Will it miss and pop out the other side?
or
Will it be a goner? (impact only)
or
Will it melt down?


I say she pop's out for more.

reply to post by orionthehunter

Anyone know if the comet's tail will be visible to the naked eye in the early morning or late evening when the sky is darker?

No, is the short answer. It's too close to the Sun (so is lost in the Sun's glare as I said above), to far away from us, and too small, both of which make it competitively dim compared to the Sun.

Even Venus, which is much brighter than the comet (obvious from the images) is way to close and dim.

The comet hit, I'm sure. I wonder if there will be a CME though.

[edit on 3/1/10 by Nventual]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6aae47e5c8c7.jpg[/atsimg]

Here's a photograph I took of the Sun on January 1st. Notice that the Sun is more or less properly exposed, and you can see detail on the Sun's surface (Sunspot group 1039 is clearly visible).

Notice also that the area surrounding the Sun is black. That is because the celestial objects that are close to the Sun are too dim to be caught in an exposure that can capture detail on the Sun's surface. The Sun is thousands of times brighter than these objects, and no camera could correctly expose both the Sun and the other celestial objects that are close to it.

This illustrates why the LASCO C3 detector needs a central disc to hide the glare of the Sun so we can see other celestial objects close to it.

And its gone ... Nice work Sun!


spaceweather.com...

Originally posted by underduck
And its gone ... Nice work Sun!


spaceweather.com...

gone ? or out of site?

www.youtube.com...

the action starts at 5:06

I'd still say this has a few more hours of observation before any official claims are made

and the LASCO C3 still shows a very obvious tail

[edit on 3-1-2010 by kyle43]

To me it looks like the sun pulled it in and we will see that one no more. Its companion was to far out to be pulled in.