Another Comet to plunge in to the Sun .Comet SWAN

It is a part of the Kreutz-group comets a very bright one and was discovered last week.

This one will be observed these days and probably will not survive sun’s atmosphere.

A bright comet is diving into the sun. It was discovered just last week by SOHO’s SWAN instrument, so it has been named “Comet SWAN.” The comet’s death plunge (or “swan dive“) comes just as the sun has unleashed a strong flare and radiation storm around Earth. SOHO images of the comet are confused to some degree by energetic protons striking the camera.

This is a Kreutz sungrazer, a fragment of the same ancient comet that produced sungrazing Comet Lovejoy in Dec. 2011. According to comet expert Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC, “Comet SWAN is one of the brightest Kreutz-group comets ever observed by SOHO, although not quite as bright as Comet Lovejoy.” Battams forecasts a peak magnitude of -1 for Comet SWAN, while Lovejoy was three magnitudes brighter at -4. Will Comet SWAN survive its plunge through the sun’s atmosphere as Comet Lovejoy did?

Probably not, but experts also said Comet Lovejoy would not survive, and they were happily wrong.

source(theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com...

source(theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com...

After recent strong flares I think it will be very interesting to see this show of another comet to dive in the Sun.

I hope that comet brought some bottled water... it could get a little toasty...

So its going to SWAN dive into the sun.....I will get my coat.

But seeing that the mass of the comet is alot smaller then the mass of the sun I don't think it will do anything and most of it will burn off before hitting it.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
So its going to SWAN dive into the sun.....I will get my coat.

But seeing that the mass of the comet is alot smaller then the mass of the sun I don't think it will do anything and most of it will burn off before hitting it.

edit on 14-3-2012 by boymonkey74 because: (no reason given)

I think it would be a show to watch if we have the opportunity

reply to post by diamondsmith


Just hope it doesnt hit the big black sphere near the sun everyone's going on about

Hope they can somehow film it though your right it would be cool.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by diamondsmith

 

Just hope it doesnt hit the big black sphere near the sun everyone's going on about

Sorry I have not seen any black sphere near the sun just the recent strong flares but I don't think they are related,or the comet could influence future eruptions.

reply to post by boymonkey74

Hope they can somehow film it though your right it would be cool.

The last big comet that plunged into the Sun was quite a show almost get through the other side of the Sun.

Originally posted by diamondsmith
reply to post by boymonkey74

 

Hope they can somehow film it though your right it would be cool.

The last big comet that plunged into the Sun was quite a show almost get through the other side of the Sun.

no it didnt ...... and dont link the vid off the flare going off @ the same time as the comet hit the sun

reply to post by nofear39

and dont link the vid off the flare going off @ the same time as the comet hit the sun

This how it looks at first sight,but who knows what actually was there...no one.

Interesting! S&F...

From the original source (Karl Battam's blog), the last update as of 05h30PM yesterday:

The theory was great, but it looks like this SWAN flies alone. I only see one comet, albeit a very nice one! And I thought it was rather fun to throw out a theory and test it "live". It is possible that there was an outburst or a fragmentation event of some kind several days ago, but any traces of evidence that may exist are not resolvable in the LASCO C3 images (or the STEREO HI-1B full-res images, which I just now got my hands on).

So what does that leave us with? Well, we still have one of the brightest Kreutz-group comets observed by SOHO in 17yrs, and we have a remaining mystery of just why this comet was clearly visible in images that require an extremely big, and very bright object. We can now sit back and watch Comet SWAN plunge (I refuse to say "SWAN dive"...) into the solar atmosphere where I am sure that it will evaporate completely!

I will wait now until we have a more significant data set, and I will process a movie and get that online. There is obviously something different about this comet -- we just don't know what it is (yet). So keep a close eye on it over the next couple of days as it races towards the Sun.

We will don't have to wait much longer before new interesting pictures pop up of this comet from LASCO C3 datas. The last one:

reply to post by elevenaugust

We will don't have to wait much longer before new interesting pictures pop up of this comet from LASCO C3 datas. The last one:

Thank you for the update ,it will be an interesting show to watch,I hope,

SOHO images of the comet are confused to some degree by energetic protons striking the camera.

reply to post by diamondsmith


I assume you're talking about comet Lovejoy, which actually survived its encounter with the sun.

Doubt this one will.

As the comet approaches, and comes into view of the C3 LASCO, it's interesting to note, as of 17:24 UTC, SOHO has not posted any more images since 10:30 UTC.
Any other wtfs out there?

Also, Im having trouble finding this comet on JPL. Would like to know the size and orbital parameters (from credible source of course).


Also, the creator of this video i found claims it is C/2006 M4


Wrong!! According to JPL, C/2006 M4 is 17 AU away and leaving. C/2006 M4 (SWAN)
Then... what comet is that?

Comet is now in the coronagraph field:



Battam's pronostics: Comet SWAN will not survive to its pass close to the Sun and will hit it!!

I'm being delinquent here. Lots of technical problems today. "Poor workman" and all that... Anyway, before we get any more updated images of Comet SWAN (very soon, as I type this) I wanted to make a comment on the "survivability prospects" of the comet. We saw with Lovejoy that it survived reasonably well, although there is a strong argument to be made that the nucleus of that comet actually disintegrated at or near perihelion, because ground observers were completely unable to find any central condensation in the center of the coma. But regardless, something survived and so now we have to ask: "Will Comet SWAN survive?". I touched on this in an earlier entry but despite lessons learned from Lovejoy, I don't think this comet will make it. We have seen SOHO-discovered Kreutz comet almost as big as this one that have certainly not made it, and this one is much closer in size to those objects than it is to Lovejoy. So the odds are stacked against it. Also, if it did have an outburst in the SWAN imager, then you could infer it's a pretty volatile thing -- more so than your typical Kreutz -- and maybe it will vaporize or fragment catastrophically at perihelion.

That said, we do not yet know the orbit of this thing. I have actually submitted some measurements now that should allow for a reasonably good orbit calculation, but it might be a while before they are published. The critical parameter will be perihelion distance -- the measure of how close it will get to the Sun. If this value is on the extreme upper edge of the typical Kreutz-comet orbit, then it could be as "far" as two solar radii (which equates to one solar radii from the Sun's surface, since perihelion distance is measured from the Sun center). In this case, it does have a better shot at making it. On the other hand, it could be extreme in the alternate direction and have perihelion distance a little less than one solar radius... Yes, that would mean it would literally hit the Sun!

Most likely, it will be the typical 1.2 - 1.4 solar radii that most of these comets have. And most likely it will not survive. New data should start to flow very soon, and I think that we're probably only a few hours (maybe 6?) from perihelion, so there's not too long to wait to find out!

Source

The comet finally hits the sun!!

It seems like that it also produce a CME at the opposite side, check out this 100 last frames movie from the LASCO C2:

Click here then select under "image type" "LASCO C2" and type "100" under "Latest n images" and search, you'll get a movie of the last 100 images.

Some screenshoots:


Entering the C2 field


Entering the coronagraph field


Comet doesn't reappears at the opposite side, there's a CME instead

reply to post by elevenaugust
Thank you elevenaugust for all the info you brought,the nascom link doesn't work but no problem I find it else where.

Comet Swan was discovered in 2006, predicted to never return as it had an odd hyperbolic orbit.

apod.nasa.gov...

Here's a video of it going into the sun.



Definitely not coming back now.

reply to post by WmassCrooner


Anyone else think it looked like a sperm fertilizing an egg

reply to post by boymonkey74


Yeah, I'm thinking it was just the grainy resolution making it look like that. It did cross my mind though.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by diamondsmith

 

Just hope it doesnt hit the big black sphere near the sun everyone's going on about

Hope they can somehow film it though your right it would be cool.

edit on 14-3-2012 by boymonkey74 because: (no reason given)

That would be something if it hit the Stargate ! lol