possible large 'sundiver' comet anticipated on the 15th

soho article

"SOHO's 16th Birthday gift is on it's way, and the tracking number states delivery by midnight on December 15th!

On December 2nd, 2011, newly discovered Kreutz-group comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) was announced. SOHO discovers these objects on average every three days, but this one is different... it was found from a ground based telescope, and marks the first such discovery in over 40yrs."

it will be interesting to watch Sol react, don't u think?

reply to post by galactix


These sundiver comets fascinate me, how do they do it?

It's not a planet's atmosphere they're crashing into, it's the sun.

Why don't they just vaporize before impact?

The temperature of the suns surface is 5,778 kelvin which is 9,800f or 5,427c

But it gets hotter just above the surface in a region called the chromosphere that

can reach temps upto 100,000 kelvin.

Then of course there is the suns crushing gravity and gamma rays etc.

If the answer is simply down to the comets hyper velocity, I still think

it's short of a miracle anything survives coming close to Sol

I will be watching this with great interest, thanks for posting galactix

reply to post by weirdguy

Why don't they just vaporize before impact?

They do.
sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov...

reply to post by Phage


Hey cool! Thanks, Phage

That's a nice image on that article too.

I still find it amazing they get that close

reply to post by Phage


Wow I just watched the large quicktime movie on that link you posted.

That comet is really moving

It's cool to see the sun bubbling and churning like that too

reply to post by weirdguy


The movie is obviously a time lapse, considering the sun is about 870,000 miles in diameter, that comet traversed at least a 5th of that distance which would be about light speed and we know the comet wasn't going that fast. There is that question of how far away the comet disintegrated from the sun but just using very rough figures one has to assume that is a time lapse many x's sped up.

It would take light 4.68 seconds to traverse the diameter of the sun.

Consider the planet Mercury in its perihelion of its elliptical orbit moves about 110,000 mph and the two solar satellites Helios 1 and 2 sent closer to the sun got a slingshot boost to about 160,000 mph one could venture to guess a sun grazer comet may well exceed 200,000 mph and that is an insignificant percentage of light speed.

Helios space probes

Helios 1, achieving perihelion on 17 April 1976 at a record distance of 0.29 AU (or 43.432 million kilometers), slightly inside the orbit of Mercury. The probes are notable for having set a maximum speed record among spacecraft at 252,792 km/h (157,078 mph).

I don't have a fast link on the aphelion and perihelion speed fluctuations of Mercury's orbital speeds. Of course the sun doesn't set THE absolute speed limits of orbiting bodies but largely it does in its solar system.

reply to post by Illustronic


yes, your correct Illustronic.

I just noticed the time on the video and it had been sped up

the original footage goes for 12 minutes.

reply to post by weirdguy


You know I was so focused on looking at the comet I didn't take much notice of the time stamp and just went off figuring about what speed that would be if it wasn't a time lapse. I suppose I am aware most solar movie footage are time lapses though. So your aren't the only one to comment on an incomplete observation.

Awsome S&F
just want to keep track of this for now

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by weirdguy

 

Why don't they just vaporize before impact?

They do.
sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov...

The vast majority of these comets are not on a Sun-hitting trajectory—they simply pass very close to the Sun (a few hundred thousand km from its surface). It's why they're called Sun grazers, not hitters

I am concerned about the effect that Comet Lovejoy will have on the Sun.
One of my clients had a dream last night that a "bullet" hit the Sun which caused big balls of fire to be ejected from the Sun towards the earth. This person is completely oblivious to any kind of solar anything. I hope that this wasn't a precognitive dream.

I was told by an entity that something epic and unforeseen will happen on that day, something that will change the earth almost as much as the day the world ends, I asked precisely what would happen, and I was told it is is ineffable, and I was not supposed to know until that day what would occur.

reply to post by eywadevotee

Thank you for that completely useless and irrelevant piece of information.

To the poster previous to you. Don't worry. The comet will have no effect on 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. Yesterday the brightening comet entered the field of view of NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft

www.spaceweather.com...

2 Football fields sounds like lots, but compare it to the size and heat of the Sun.

Originally posted by Zaradia
I am concerned about the effect that Comet Lovejoy will have on the Sun.
One of my clients had a dream last night that a "bullet" hit the Sun which caused big balls of fire to be ejected from the Sun towards the earth. This person is completely oblivious to any kind of solar anything. I hope that this wasn't a precognitive dream.

Comet Lovejoy will have NO effect on the Sun, even if it were on an impact trajectory, which it is not.

If you're worried about a comet hitting the Sun and what its effect might be, think of this: Imagine you dropped a pebble from an aeroplane into the Atlantic ocean. Well, the comet would have even less of an effect on the Sun than the pebble on the ocean.