Article

This Sunday an ancient comet will narrowly miss Mars, and put on a spectacular show

This weekend, a rare and ancient comet is going to fly extremely close to Mars, and it’s predicted to put on quite a show.

In fact, it’ll pass Mars at a distance of 139,500 kilometres – just one third of the distance from here to the Moon. That’s much, much closer then any comet has ever flown by Earth, that we know of.

The comet’s being called the Siding Spring Comet, after the Australian observatory from where it was detected, and it’s a long way from home – it’s already spent millions of years travelling from the Oort cloud, a mass of icy comets that hangs frozen at the furthest reaches of our Solar System, at a mind-blowing speed of around 56 kilometres a second.

These Oort cloud comets are extremely rare, and astronomers are keen to find out more about them. Luckily, our Mars rovers and orbiters will be watching the fly-by closely – along with the Hubble Space Telescope and hundreds of other instruments on Earth.

more at link.

ChrispenEvan said:

Article

This Sunday an ancient comet will narrowly miss Mars, and put on a spectacular show

This weekend, a rare and ancient comet is going to fly extremely close to Mars, and it’s predicted to put on quite a show.

In fact, it’ll pass Mars at a distance of 139,500 kilometres – just one third of the distance from here to the Moon. That’s much, much closer then any comet has ever flown by Earth, that we know of.

The comet’s being called the Siding Spring Comet, after the Australian observatory from where it was detected, and it’s a long way from home – it’s already spent millions of years travelling from the Oort cloud, a mass of icy comets that hangs frozen at the furthest reaches of our Solar System, at a mind-blowing speed of around 56 kilometres a second.

These Oort cloud comets are extremely rare, and astronomers are keen to find out more about them. Luckily, our Mars rovers and orbiters will be watching the fly-by closely – along with the Hubble Space Telescope and hundreds of other instruments on Earth.

more at link.

Wish my camera was that good.

ChrispenEvan said:

Article

This Sunday an ancient comet will narrowly miss Mars, and put on a spectacular show

This weekend, a rare and ancient comet is going to fly extremely close to Mars, and it’s predicted to put on quite a show.

In fact, it’ll pass Mars at a distance of 139,500 kilometres – just one third of the distance from here to the Moon. That’s much, much closer then any comet has ever flown by Earth, that we know of.

The comet’s being called the Siding Spring Comet, after the Australian observatory from where it was detected, and it’s a long way from home – it’s already spent millions of years travelling from the Oort cloud, a mass of icy comets that hangs frozen at the furthest reaches of our Solar System, at a mind-blowing speed of around 56 kilometres a second.

These Oort cloud comets are extremely rare, and astronomers are keen to find out more about them. Luckily, our Mars rovers and orbiters will be watching the fly-by closely – along with the Hubble Space Telescope and hundreds of other instruments on Earth.

more at link.

Pretty sure a comet flew a bit closer than that at Tunguska, 1905ish … (ok, it may not have been a comet, but some think it was)

Are we there yet? are we there yet?

> The comet’s being called the Siding Spring Comet

A bit like comet “McNaught” or comet “Linear”. Immediately begs the question “Which of the many comets discovered by Siding Spring”?

> Pretty sure a comet flew a bit closer than that at Tunguska, 1905ish … (ok, it may not have been a comet, but some think it was)

I think it was. Anything else and the disintegration wouldn’t have been anywhere near as complete.

mollwollfumble said:

> Pretty sure a comet flew a bit closer than that at Tunguska, 1905ish … (ok, it may not have been a comet, but some think it was)

I think it was. Anything else and the disintegration wouldn’t have been anywhere near as complete.

30 June 1908.

PS. Comets hit MUCH harder than asteroids, because damage is proportional to kinetic energy and because kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared. Comets have higher velocities than asteroids, although Tunguski was a dud in that sense, it only hit with a velocity similar to that of an asteroid.

mollwollfumble said:

mollwollfumble said:

> Pretty sure a comet flew a bit closer than that at Tunguska, 1905ish … (ok, it may not have been a comet, but some think it was)

I think it was. Anything else and the disintegration wouldn’t have been anywhere near as complete.

30 June 1908.

PS. Comets hit MUCH harder than asteroids, because damage is proportional to kinetic energy and because kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared. Comets have higher velocities than asteroids, although Tunguski was a dud in that sense, it only hit with a velocity similar to that of an asteroid.

I was going ask about that but you answered it in the next post.