Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Evidence of a Late Heavy Bombardment Occuring in Another Solar System

This artist's conception illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Planetary scientists have not been able to agree that a turbulent period in our solar system’s history called the Late Heavy Bombardment actually occurred. But now, using observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have detected activity resembling a similar type of event where icy bodies from the outer solar system are possibly pummeling rocky worlds closer to the star. This is the first time such activity has been seen in another planetary system.

“Where the comets are hitting the rocky bodies is in the habitable zone around this star, so not only are life-forming materials possibly being delivered to rocky worlds, but also in the right place for life as we know it to grow,” said Carey Lisse, senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “This is similar to what happened to our own solar system during the Late Heavy Bombardment.”

Lisse spoke to journalists in a conference call from the Signposts of Planets meeting taking place at Goddard Space Flight Center this week.

Spitzer observations showed a band of dust around the nearby, naked-eye-visible star called Eta Corvi, located in the constellation Corvus in northern sky. Within the band of warm dust, Spitzer’s infrared detectors saw the chemical fingerprints of water ice, organics and rock, which strongly matches the contents of an obliterated giant comet, suggesting a collision took place between a planet and one or more comets. Also detected was evidence for flash-frozen rocks, nanodiamonds and amorphous silica.

This dust is located 3 AU away from Eta Corvi, which is the “habitable zone” around that star, and is close enough to the star that Earth-like worlds could exist. Lisse said although it hasn’t been confirmed, researchers think there is a Neptune-like world and at least two other planets in this system. A bright, icy Kuiper Belt-like region located 3-4 times farther out than our own Kuiper Belt was discovered around Eta Corvi in 2005.

“This is very possibly a planet-rich system,” Lisse said.

The light signature emitted by the dust around Eta Corvi also resembles meteorites found on Earth. “We see a match between dust around Eta Corvi and the Almahata Sitta meteorites, which fell to Earth in Sudan in 2008,” Llisse said. “We can argue that the material around Eta Covi is rich in carbon and water, things that help life grow on Earth.”

The Eta Corvi system is approximately one billion years old, which the research team considers about the right age for such a bombardment.

No asteroidal dust was found in the disk around Eta Corvi.

“Asteroidal dust would look like it had been heated, and chemically and physically altered, and most of the water and carbon would be gone,” Lisse said. “This dust is very rich in water and carbon and the rocky components are very primitive and un-altered.”

Most planetary formation theories can’t account for such an intense period of bombardment in our own solar system so late in its history, but the Nice Model proposed in 2005 suggests the Late Heavy Bombardment was triggered when the giant planets in our solar system— which formed in a more compact configuration – rapidly migrated away from each other (and their orbital separations all increased), and a disk of small asteroids and comets that lay outside the orbits of the planets was destabilized, causing a sudden massive delivery of asteroids and comets to the inner solar system. The barrage scarred the Moon and produced large amounts of dust.

“We can see the process of this happening at Eta Corvi and can learn more about our own solar system, since we can’t go back in time,” Lisse said. “It’s very possible that the rain of comets and Kuiper Belt Objects brought life to Earth.”

Lisse and his team are not sure if one big comet or lots of smaller comets are pummeling the inner solar system. “It is probably many bodies, but we only see the effects of the largest ones,” he said.

Could this be an indication that a Late Heavy Bombardment happens in many solar systems? “It’s not clear whether this is an atypical system, but we do know of one other possible system where it could be happening,” Lisse said in response to the question posed by Universe Today. “I think this is a rare event, which might mean that life is rare if you need a Late Heavy Bombardment for life to happen.”

Lisse said the reason they studied this star was the earlier detection of the Kuiper Belt-like region around Eta Corvi. “We knew it was an exceptional system from previous infrared sky surveys and the large bright Kuiper Belt was just the tip of the iceberg,” Lisse said. “This system was shouting, ‘I’m something extraordinary, come figure out my mystery!”

Paper: Spitzer Evidence for a Late Heavy Bombardment and the Formation of Urelites in Eta Corvi at ~1 Gyr

Source: Signposts of Planets conference call, JPL Press release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where’s My Doomsday? Remnants of Comet Elenin Pass by Earth Without Incident

Image taken with the 2m Faulkes North Telescope of the region of sky where Comet Elenin should have been. . Field of view 10 arcmins Stack of up to 13 Bessel R band filtered images (20s) Limiting Magnitude 20.5 Image (c) Nick Howes, Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero/LCOGT/Faulkes Telescope Project. Used by permission

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If you were waiting for Comet Elenin to wreak havoc on Earth so that you didn’t have to pay off your credit card debt or go into work today, I’m sorry to inform you that doomsday didn’t happen. All that remained of Comet Elenin, — which wasn’t much — made its closest pass by Earth yesterday (Oct. 16, 2011) without causing any earthquakes, tsunamis, or high tides and it didn’t collide with Earth, either. Moreover, there was no brown dwarf or Mothership hidden in the comet’s coma. And in case you didn’t notice, this comet did not cause three days of darkness around September 26, 2011.

“I don’t know why fearmongers chose my comet,” the comet’s discoverer Leonid Elenin told Universe Today. “I received many letters from scared people. But if they believe in conspiracy theories I can’t help them.”

For some reason, conspiracy and doomsday theorists chose this small little comet — one that was to come no closer to Earth than 34 million km (21 million miles) during its closest approach on October 16th – to be the harbinger of doom.

But here we are, just fine.

Well, except for wars, terrorism, global warming and other things that the human race inflicts on itself. There are enough bad things going on here on planet Earth that conspiracy theorists shouldn’t fabricate doomsday predictions just to needlessly scare people for fun and profit.

So why didn’t Comet Elenin cause doomsday?

1. It couldn’t have hit Earth, or affected Earth’s orbit. The comet was predicted to come 34 million km (21 million miles) away at its closest approach. Just in case you can’t figure that out, one object can’t hit another at that distance. Plus, the gravity exerted by a small object won’t affect Earth either. To put this in perspective, this distance is only a little closer than the closest approach of Venus to Earth, and roughly 100 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Nothing happens to Earth when Venus is at closest approach, and Venus is 12,000 kilometers in diameter, while Elenin was 3-5 kilometers across. When the comet was intact it had less than a billionth of the tidal force of the Moon.

Where Comet Elenin should have been in the sky on October 16, 2011 shows nothing left of the the distinegrated comet, and all that is visible are star trails. Credit: Ian Musgrave, using the Global Rent-a-Scope.

2. Comet Elenin fell apart. Sometimes, long period comets that originate from the outer parts of our solar system begin to dissipate as they get closer to the Sun. But Elenin was hit by solar flares from the Sun on August 19 and began disintegrating. When it reached its closest point to the Sun on September 10, it basically was toast. Just recently the location of where the comet should be has become visible in the night sky, out of the Sun’s glare. Several images from different amateur astronomers show absolutely nothing. The comet has completely disintegrated and fallen apart.

Earlier today, astronomer Nick Howes and his colleagues using the 2 meter Faulkes telescope took 30 minutes worth of exposures and saw nothing of Comet Elenin in the sky (top image). “We observed objects at magnitude 20.5, but saw no trace at all of Comet Elenin,” Howes told Universe Today. “If it had stayed together, it should have been almost visible with the naked eye now.”

3. What is left of the comet won’t cause problems, either. The average density of a comet’s coma is about the same as the density of the atmosphere on the Moon, and any rocks or debris that might be left over from the comet are small enough that they would burn up in Earth’s atmosphere if Earth does go through the wake of the coma or debris from the comet. And remember, several times a year Earth goes through the debris from comets and all that happens is we get beautiful meteor showers to enjoy.

And after this, don’t worry about Comet Elenin or its leftovers. Earth won’t pass through it again for another 12,000 years.

So move along, folks, nothing here. Comet Elenin is just another doomsday that didn’t happen, just like NASA, Leonid Elenin, and many other people said.

And if you proudly claim you aren’t a sheeple and are now just waiting and searching for the next doomsday theory to hang your every hope upon, why don’t you try expending your energy on this: Enjoy every day on this beautiful planet and live your life in its fullest. Use real science and learn to think critically. And perhaps you could be a person who could help come up with solutions to some of the real problems on planet Earth.

(And by the way, don’t worry about Oct. 21, 2011 (Harold Camping makes another prediction) or Dec. 21, 2012 (Mayan calendar) either. Same story.)

Second image source: Astroblog by Ian Musgrave

Posted on by Jon Voisey

Was the “First Photographed UFO” a Comet?

First photograph of a UFO sighting, taken 12 August 1883 by Jose Bonilla.
First photograph of a UFO sighting, taken 12 August 1883 by Jose Bonilla.

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On August 12th, 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla was preparing to study the Sun at the recently opened Zacatecas Observatory. However, the Sun’s surface was marred by numerous objects quickly travelling across its disk. Over the course of the day and the next, Bonilla exposed several wet plates to take images of the 447 objects he would observe. They weren’t released publicly until January 1st, 1886 when they were published in the magazine L’Astronomie. Since then, UFOlogists have crowed these photographs as the first photographic evidence of UFOs. The chief editor of L’Astronomie passed the observations off as migrating animals, but a new study proposes the observation was due to the breakup of a comet that nearly hit us.

The only piece of evidence the authors, led by Hector Manterola at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, use to suggest that this was a comet in the process of breaking up, was the descriptions of the objects as being “fuzzy” in nature and leaving dark trails behind them. Assuming this were the case, the authors consider how close the object would have been. Since astronomers at observatories in Mexico City, or Puebla had not reported the objects, this would imply that they did not cross the disc of the Sun from these locations due to parallax. As such, the maximum distance the object could have been is roughly 80,000 km, roughly 1/5th the distance to the moon.

But the team suggests the fragments may have passed even closer. By the time comets reach the inner solar system, they have a significant velocity of some tens of kilometers per second. In such a case, to transverse the disc of the Sun in the time reported by Bonilla (a third to a full second), the object would have been, at most, at a distance of ~8,000km.

At such distances, the overall size of the fragments would be in rough agreement of sizes of other fragmented comets such as 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, which gave off several fragments in 2006. Based on the number of fragments, estimated sizes, and density of an average comet, the authors estimate that the mass may be anywhere between 2 x 1012 and 8 x 1015 kg. While this is a very large range (three orders of magnitude), it roughly brackets the range of known comets, again making it plausible. The upper range of this mass estimate is on par with Mars’ moon Deimos, which is generally held to be similar in mass to the progenitor of the impact that killed the dinosaurs.

One oddity is that one would likely expect such a close breakup to result in a meteor storm. The timing of these events is just before the annual Perseid meteor shower, but reports for that year, such as this one, do not depict it as being exceptional, or having a different radiant than should be expected. Instead, it notes that 157 of the 186 meteors observed on the 11th were definitively Perseids, and that the “year’s display cannot be reckoned as a fine one by any means.” Meanwhile, the Leonid meteor shower (peaking in November), was exceptional that year, generating an estimated 1,000 meteors an hour, but again, no records seem to indicate an unusual origin.

In total, I find the characterization of Bonilla’s observation as a comet plausible, but generally unconvincing. However, if it were a fragmented comet, we’re very lucky it wasn’t any closer.

Posted on by Jason Major

Comet Elenin Disintegrated?

This could be our last look at Comet Elenin...

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Comet Elenin, the supposed “doomsday comet” that has inspired so much confusion and controversy since its discovery in December 2010,  may have broken apart completely during its recent pass around the Sun.

Discoverer Leonid Elenin posted the image above earlier today on his website, SpaceObs.org. Taken with the International Scientific Optical Network’s 18″ telescope in New Mexico (ISON-NM), it shows what may be the remnants of Elenin, a faint cloud barely visible after its exit from behind the Sun.

“On the left you can see possible position of this ‘cloud’,” Leonid writes. “Brightness of this object does not exceed 18m, which means what now, magnitude of the comet is lower then predicted on 12m. Hopefully in the near future debris of the comet will be observed on a large telescopes, and perhaps we’ll see some details of this ‘cloud’.”

Ground-based viewing of Elenin’s remains may be hampered over the next few days by the full Moon, he adds.

Although many rumors have been spread about the catastrophic danger Elenin poses to humans, in reality the comet was never a threat. Not expected to come any closer than 22 million miles (35 million km) to Earth, it’s been previously speculated that Elenin would most likely disintegrate during its current orbit.

“I don’t know why fearmongers [chose] my comet,” Leonid Elenin told Universe Today. “I received many letters from scared people. But if they believe in conspiracy theories I can’t help them.”

Hopefully this helps put some of the doomsday nonsense to rest!

See Leonid’s latest post on his site here.

Image: ISON-NM Observatory

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Best Evidence Yet That Comets Delivered Water for Earth’s Oceans

New measurements from the Herschel Space Observatory have discovered water with the same chemical signature as our oceans in a comet called Hartley 2 (pictured at right). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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The idea isn’t new that Earth’s oceans originated from comets bombarding our planet back in its early days. But astronomers have now found the best evidence yet for this scenario. The Herschel infrared space observatory detected that comet Hartley 2, which originates from the distant Kuiper Belt, contains water with the same chemical signature as Earth’s oceans.

“Our results with Herschel suggest that comets could have played a major role in bringing vast amounts of water to an early Earth,” said Dariusz Lis, senior research associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and co-author of a new paper in the journal Nature, published online on Oct. 5. “This finding substantially expands the reservoir of Earth ocean-like water in the solar system to now include icy bodies originating in the Kuiper Belt.”

Previous looks at various other comets showed water content different from Earth, with deuterium levels around twice that of Earth’s oceans, but those comets came from the Oort Cloud. Scientists theorized that if comets of this kind had collided with Earth, they could not have contributed more than a few percent of Earth’s water.

The Deep Impact spacecraft successfully flew past Comet Hartley 2 in November 2010 and is an example of the type of comet that the UCLA scientists describe in their research. Image: UPI/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD.

But Herschel’s observations of Hartley 2 are the first in-depth look at water in a comet from the Kuiper Belt — home of icy, rocky bodies that includes dwarf planets and innumerable comets — and it showed a surprising difference.

Using HIFI, a highly sensitive infrared spectrometer, Herschel peered into the comet’s coma, or thin, gaseous atmosphere, and found that Hartley 2 possessed half as much “heavy water” as other comets analyzed to date. In heavy water, one of the two normal hydrogen atoms has been replaced by the heavy hydrogen isotope known as deuterium. The ratio between heavy water and light, or regular, water in Hartley 2 is the same as the water on Earth’s surface.

“Comet Hartley’s deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio is almost exactly the same as the water in Earth’s oceans,” says Paul Hartogh, Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, who led the international team of astronomers in this study.

The amount of heavy water in a comet is related to the environment where the comet formed, and by comparing the deuterium to hydrogen ratio found in the water in Earth’s oceans with that in extraterrestrial objects, astronomers were hoping to identify the origin of our water.

Astronomers know Hartley 2 comes from the Kuiper Belt, since they can track its path as it swoops into Earth’s neighborhood in the inner solar system every six-and-a-`half years. The five comets besides Hartley 2 whose heavy-water-to-regular-water ratios have been obtained all came from the Oort Cloud, an even more distant region in the solar system. This region is 10,000 times farther away than the Kuiper Belt, and is home to the most documented comets.

The team is now using Herschel to look at other Kuiper Belt comets to see whether they, too, carry the same type of water.

“Thanks to this detection made possible by Herschel, an old, very interesting discussion will be revived and invigorated,” said Göran Pilbratt, ESA Herschel Project Scientist. “It will be exciting to see where this discovery will take us.”

Paper: “Ocean-like Water in the Jupiter-family Comet 103P Hartley”

Sources: JPL, ESA

Posted on by Gemma Lavender

Puzzling Comet Composition Solved?

How Are Comets Formed?
The Deep Impact spacecraft successfully flew past Comet Hartley 2 in November 2010 and is an example of the type of comet that the UCLA scientists describe in their research. Image: UPI/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD.

For years comets have mystified scientists with their compositions that appear to have formed in both warm and cold environments, rather than in one location of a uniform temperature. But new research shows that the reason some comets feature patches of differing surface composition is not because they are made from material that formed in different parts of the Solar System, but because some parts of their surface absorb heat at varying rates. This leads to localized heat sinks and cold traps, according to a new model constructed by David Jewitt and Aurelie Guilbert-Lepoutre from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Their model shows that the chemical composition of a comet can evolve in the ten million year period during which a comet is classed as a Centaur, migrating from the Kuiper Belt to the inner Solar System.

“The Centaurs are objects which have escaped from the Kuiper belt and are drifting amongst the giant planets,” says Jewitt. “Their lifetimes in these orbits are limited to about 10 million years because they are gravitationally perturbed by the planets to other orbits. At least half are ejected from the Solar System to the interstellar medium. Some are kicked inside the orbit of Jupiter, where the ice begins to sublimate and we call them comets.”

The key is variances in the surface – thermal conductivity, reflectivity (albedo), obliquity (tilt) and even topography such as craters or hilly terrain. This leads to the creation of ‘thermal shadows’.

“Just as it is cooler in the shadow of a building than standing in the full Sun, the region beneath a bright spot or a boulder on the surface of a comet will remain cooler than the surroundings,” says Jewitt. The higher the albedo, the more sunlight is reflected away, keeping that particular patch of the comet 20 to 30 degrees Celsius cooler than its surroundings. The thermal shadows can be maintained “We have calculated the way the cool spot extends down into the interior of the comet, and examined how deep and how long-lived this cool shadow region can be for objects moving on a variety of different orbits.”

Being colder, the thermal shadows attract volatile materials such as water-ice and carbon dioxide from elsewhere on the comet, enhancing the composition there. Consequently the composition of the comet becomes strongly non-uniform, as does the activity on the comet, manifest in jets of the kind seen, for example, by the Deep impact spacecraft on the Comet Hartley 2 in November 2010.

The paper can be found on the astro-ph archive and can be read here.

Posted on by VirtualAstro

The Draconid Meteor Shower – A Storm is Coming!

Geminid Meteor - George Varros (courtesy NASA)

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The Draconids are coming! Will this meteor shower produce a storm of observable meteors, or just a minor squall? The Draconid Meteor Show should begin on October 8, 2011 starting at dusk (roughly 19:00 BST) and continue through the evening. Peak activity of this normally minor and quiet shower is estimated to be at 21:00 BST (20:00 UT). There seems to be a wide range of predictions for this year’s shower, but some astronomers believe there could be up to 1,000 meteors per hour, making this a meteor storm!

The Draconids or Giacobinids as they are also known, radiate from a point in the constellation of Draco the Dragon in the Northern hemisphere. In the past, notably in 1933 and 1946, the Draconids turned into a meteor storm with meteor rates of more than one every second!

So, will this year bring us a storm? Astronomers believe so as the predicted path of the Earth through the debris streams of comet 21P/Giacobini-Ziner is favorable for a major storm, similar to what has been seen in previous years. Some reports say NASA is even considering the potential risk of damage to the International Space Station and other satellites due to meteroid impacts.

Some astronomers, on the other hand, are saying this shower could be a dud, with only 5 or so meteors per hour.

Credit: Alex Tudorica

Observers in the UK and Northern Europe are ideally placed to see the peak of the Draconids. Unfortunately the peak occurs in the day time for North America. There will also be a bright Moon which may drown out many but the brightest meteors, but if predictions are correct, you will still see many. You may see Draconid meteors on the 7th an the 9th also, so it is worth going out and checking the skies.

The Constellation Draco in the northern sky in the northern hemisphere.

Draco is a circumpolar constellation visible all night from northern latitudes.

There is no skill or even astronomical knowledge needed to enjoy meteor showers. All you need is to be comfortable, away from bright lights and your eyes. Sit back on a recliner or garden chair and fill your gaze with sky as meteors can appear anywhere as they radiate from the constellation of Draco. For more info on how to enjoy meteor showers visit meteorwatch.org

So what will you see? Draconid meteors are usually slow and bright streaks of light, but if you look away, you can still miss them so keep your gaze on the sky.

There are no guarantees of a meteor storm or even a good meteor shower as these phenomena can be very unpredictable, but the only way to find out is to go outside and look up.

If predictions are correct, you could be in for a spectacular treat and something truly memorable, so don’t miss it. Even if it is cloudy, you can listen to the meteor shower or you can watch as they enter Earths atmosphere

For more information on the Draconids, see the International Meteor Organization’s post on this year’s shower.

Good Luck!

Fireball Meteor
Credit: Pierre Martin of Arnprior, Ontario, Canada.
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Did a Comet Hit Cause an Explosion on the Sun?

This amazing video from the SOHO mission (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) shows a sun-diving comet hitting the solar surface on October 1, 2011 and unexpectedly a huge explosion occurs shortly after. Are the two events related? Probably not, but solar scientists don’t know for sure. The region where the CME originated was on the opposite side of the Sun from the comet hit, so that is very great distance. Scientists say there is no known mechanism for comets to trigger a CME.

SpaceWeather.com reports that before 2011 most solar physicists would have discounted these two events as being related, but earlier this year, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched another sungrazer comet disintegrate in the Sun’s atmosphere, and it appeared to interact with plasma and magnetic fields in its surroundings as it fell apart. Could a puny comet cause a magnetic instability that might propagate and blossom into a impressive CME? Most likely this is just a coincidence, but this is definitely an event in which solar scientists are taking a closer look. The comet, named SOHO-2143, was just discovered on Sept. 30 by an amateur astronomer.

See below for SDO’s look at two solar flares which also occurred on October 1, showing how events on the Sun can be related.
Continue reading “Did a Comet Hit Cause an Explosion on the Sun?”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Comet Elenin is Now Fading Away

Comet Elenin on Sept. 14, 2011. Image and annotated chart by Michael Mattiazzo. Used by permission

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As far as Comet Elenin goes, the only chance of impending doom is for the comet itself: it is disintegrating and quickly fading away. Australian amateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo has been monitoring this comet’s trip toward perihelion (closest point in its orbit to the Sun), which occurred on September 10, 2011, and he says Comet Elenin has likely has not survived. The image above was taken by Mattiazzo on today (Sept. 14) and it is barely visible as a disintegrating smudge.

Comet Elenin – the comet that has created a hoopla of completely nonsensical, non-scientific doomsday predictions — faded dramatically after being hit by a solar flare on August 20, as we reported earlier. Subsequent images revealed a spreading, diffuse coma. It will likely continue to fade and become more diffuse.

Elenin’s mass is smaller than average and its trajectory will take it no closer than 34 million km (21 million miles) of Earth as it circles the Sun. It will make its closest approach to Earth on October 16th, but was closest to the Sun on Sept. 10.

“On the night of August 19th, I estimated the brightness of comet Elenin as magnitude 8.1 and it was on target for naked eye observability in September,” Mattiazzo wrote on his website, Southern Comets. “On the following night of the 20th, the comet had faded dramatically by half a magnitude and appeared more diffuse. This was a sign of impending doom for comet Elenin.”

Elenin is at about magnitude 10 now, and fading as it is in the process of disintegrating.

It failed to recover, (you can see a series of images taken between August 19 and September 11 on Mattiazzo’s website), with the comet’s the nucleus taking on an elongated appearance with progressive fading.

Comet Elenin on Sept. 11, 2011. 20x10second exposures taken with a C11 SCT and Starlight Express MX7c CCD imager. Credit: Michael Mattiazzo. Used by permission

“Such acts of disruption are all too common for small comets that have close encounters with the Sun,” Mattiazzo said.

One of the most spectacular examples of a comet breaking apart occurred in July 2000 when comet C/1999 S4 LINEAR disintegrated and several observatories had a good view of the action.

A closeup photo of the breakup of Comet S4 LINEAR taken on August 6, 2000 by the European Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Credit: ESO

Elenin is now nearly in an inferior solar conjunction, where it will be directly between the Earth and the Sun (so we won’t be able to see it due to the brightness of the Sun). Another amateur astronomer from Australia, Ian Musgrave, says it is doubtful that it will be bright enough to see in the cameras from the Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft, and that we will probably have to wait until October when the comet moves away from the Sun for powerful Earth-based telescopes to try and find if any of the comet survives.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Exposing PseudoAstronomy Podcast Tackles Elenin Nonsense

A big thanks to Stuart Robbins for recording a special episode of his Exposing PseudoAstronomy podcast on the Comet Elenin scaremongering. Somebody needed to do it. Stuart explains Elenin, the crazy conspiracy theories about it, and the rational, science-based reality – it’s just a regular comet, that won’t get any closer to Earth than Venus, and might very well be breaking up. Not very scary.

Anyway, check out this episode and then dig into the Exposing PseudoAstronomy back catalog.

Thanks to @2012hoax for the link.