Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleLeftyBurnz
Mr. I Eat Butthole
Male User Gallery


Registered: 06/21/05
Posts: 24,570
Loc: FL
Exploding Comet.
    #7589674 - 11/02/07 10:18 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_on_sc/brighter_comet


KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.

The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.

"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."

Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said.

Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomb-like structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.

"What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable," Lewis said. "We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast."

Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last, but estimate it could be weeks — if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.


--------------------


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Comet Macholz a near miss ? tripndicular 1,112 6 01/08/05 01:00 PM
by tripndicular
* . AnonymousRabbit 1,163 8 05/11/09 04:36 PM
by Big_Whoop
* Telescope VS Microscope
( 1 2 all )
DirtyTomFlint 2,878 22 03/24/14 01:01 AM
by plambe
* Amatuer astronomers...a naked-eye comet right now! ToTheSummit 1,179 14 10/26/07 03:41 PM
by ivi
* Jupiter rises late at night in the east everybody Amoeboid 1,714 17 10/03/12 02:17 PM
by Absent Minded
* any astronomers in the house? idiotek 1,134 17 10/02/06 06:16 AM
by niteowl
* NuSTAR space telescope DeadHearts 468 4 06/14/12 10:10 AM
by DeadHearts
* Comets, meteorites, and other spacely things (edit, one's coming!)
( 1 2 all )
shLong 2,826 28 10/05/12 01:12 PM
by shLong

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Entire Staff
301 topic views. 4 members, 61 guests and 72 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.024 seconds spending 0.009 seconds on 13 queries.