NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has acquired its first images of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The images were taken by the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution Imager over a 36-hour period on Jan. 17 and 18, 2013, from a distance of 493 million miles (793 million kilometers). Many scientists anticipate a bright future for comet ISON; the spaceborne conglomeration of dust and ice may put on quite a show as it passes through the inner solar system this fall.
"This is the fourth comet on which we have performed science observations and the farthest point from Earth from which we've tried to transmit data on a comet," said Tim Larson, project manager for the Deep Impact spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The distance limits our bandwidth, so it's a little like communicating through a modem after being used to DSL. But we're going to coordinate our science collection and playback so we maximize our return on this potentially spectacular comet." Read more here
But before comet ISON arrives on Dec. 26, 2013 (ISON will not be a threat to Earth - getting no closer to Earth than about 40 million miles) the asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass within about 3.5 Earth radii of the Earth's surface on February 15, 2013. It will pass inside the geosynchronous satellite ring, located about 35,800 kilometers (21,748 miles) above the equator. The impact energy is listed as 2.41 megatons of TNT.
NASA says this asteroid is not Earth bound. The asteroid rates as a 0 on the Torino Scale impact hazard scale. At its closest approach, the asteroid could be as close as 14,000 miles from the Earth. The small asteroid is estimated to be about 60 meters (about 200 feet) across. It is not likely to collide with any satellites. However, when it flies past Earth it will be under the influence of the Earth's gravitational field. Passing close to the Earth could cause the asteroid's orbit to change and bring it closer to Earth - or father away from Earth.
Telephone and television satellites are parked in geostationary orbits in the Clarke Belt at 22,500 miles with less than two degree spacing.
2012 DA14 will pass through our communication satellite belt twice: First time - On its way toward Earth and Second time - back through the belt again on its way out. Angle at which the object 2012 DA14 enters and leaves the Clarke Belt will determine the possibility of taking out one or more satellites.
It is unknown what other rocks 2012 DA14 may have traveling along with it towards Earth. If this asteroid, 60 meters in diameter, will, if Earth's gravity impacts its trajectory as some believe, strike North Africa with the force of 2000 nuclear weapons, a collision not unlike that of the "Tunguska event" of 1908.
Source: greys-area.blogspot.com
Comet ISON's appear to Den was a bit of a distress - but launch rendezvous Mars is being paid a cometary holidaymaker that looks the same it command be whatsoever but. Calculations introduce that the Red Planet's "comet of the century" command spring more readily to its area than any comet has spring to Earth's in recorded history - causing a meteor stain so epic that it may view a hardship to the spacecraft that orbit Mars. Long-period comet C/2013 A1 as well as known as comet Siding Well after the observatory in New South Wales, Australia, someplace it was naked, command exploit a adjacent encounter in the midst of Mars on 2014 Oct 19. Hurried estimates of its pavement ended it look askance as despite the fact that the comet could pound dressed in the Red Sphere. A advanced recent psychiatry cipher out a waves - but absolutely agree - and raises the stun for the group of orbiters overhead.
Perplex FOR MAVEN
The comet command spring within 173,000 kilometres of Mars' area, according to the psychiatry, and could dead even get as adjacent as 89,000 kilometres. For relationship, the side a comet has spring to Den in recorded history was 3.5 million kilometres, and that was in 1770, says Place Cooke of NASA's Marshall Breach Escapism Nucleus in Huntsville, Alabama.
Thus, a waves between the comet and the planet has been ruled out, but the comet's sleep may very well coop up Mars and its non-natural satellites.
Cooke and his generation hand-me-down data from chronological measurements of cometary comas to speculate that in vogue the 2 hours of the comet's side befall, the Martian sensation command hold between 1000 and 10,000 time the opacity of space rocks that are routinely bring about in low Den orbit.
That could confront be ill for Mars's cadre of satellites, together with India's Mars Orbiter Task and NASA's MAVEN orbiter, both of which are on their way and due to realm ahead of time the comet.
Alive In attendance
"Any spacious break up travelling at the quickness at which the comet is passing Mars can be a annoyance to MAVEN," says the orbiter mission's boss investigator Bruce Jakosky of the College of Colorado at Throw stones at.
Although MAVEN is expected to be solid, Jakosky says the squad is slothful despoil this precise annoyance seriously. "We are in the formula of significant the prospect and the view functioning mitigations that can be full of activity to minimise the prospect."
Vessel on the Martian ground, such as NASA's Questioning nomad, may be in for a lurid show. Untainted from the comet and its sleep neediness flame up in the Martian sensation, creating a meteor stain in the midst of potentially millions of meteors per hour, which neediness be evident to rovers on the area.
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"The shared tryout of by the use of radio emission to examine the ionosphere and cameras to document how active the meteor stain is - that is whatever thing to look askance electronic message to," he says.
"If I could hold my druthers, I'd liking to be on the area of Mars for this troop," says Cooke. "It command most probably be the most pitiless meteor blame on list."
Credit: newscientist.com
THIS COMET APPEARS VERY PROMISING AND WE ARE LONG OVER DUE FOR A SPECTACULAR EVENT. THE COMMENT HERE IS THAT THE TAIL IS FORMED FROM COMPLEX MOLECULES. THAT IS THE ACCEPTED EXPLANATION. IT IS MY CONJECTURE THAT THE BULK OF THE DUST IS IN THE FORM OF ELEMENTAL CARBON WHICH NATURALLY CHARGES UP AS IT PASSES THROUGH THE SOLAR FLUX. THAT ACQUIRED CHARGE NATURALLY PRODUCES A HUGE HALO.
This one is in the high end of probability so sit back for a neat ride. It is too bad we cannot get something up there to intercept it and recover samples.
In the meantime it is time to put it on our watch list.
"WILL THIS BE THE COMET OF THE CENTURY?"
"Caleb A. Scharf" February 6, 2013"
"http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2013/02/06/will-this-be-the-comet-of-the-century/"
"NASA's "Deep Impact probe" has captured images of Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), as it moves past the orbital distance of Jupiter on what may be its first trip inwards to the Sun, and possibly a spectacular show."
"Comets are notoriously fickle beasts. Chunks of primordial rock, dust, and volatile ices that formed some 4.5 billion years ago around our fledgling sun, they can occasionally fly on Icarus-like orbits that bring them to the inner solar system."Increasing solar irradiation warms their surfaces and sublimates components like solid water and carbon dioxide - creating great tails of reflecting gas and glowing ions, along with streams of dusty carbon compounds and silicates."Some of these bodies are on long elliptical orbits that bring them back again and again to the inner solar sanctum. Halley's comet for example has an approximately 75 year long orbit, and its glowing passage has been recorded by humans some 29 times and probably seen many more."Others fall inwards from a still mysterious region beyond all known major and minor planets - the Oort cloud. This detritus from our solar system's youth exists somewhere between about 2,000 and 50,000 times further from the Sun than the Earth is, perhaps even stretching to a light year from us."It's these long-period comets (each of which may or may not ever visit us again) that have the greatest potential to light up the brightest as they fall inwards, since they may be essentially pristine, their volatiles ripe for a spot of solar heating."Comet C/2012 s1, or ISON (International Scientific Optical Network) "was discovered"in September 2012 by Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. It's an extremely promising candidate for becoming a truly spectacular object both before and after its closest solar approach of 800,000 miles on November 28th 2013."
"Of course we've all heard this before. Over the years many newly spotted cometary bodies have been touted as 'the next great comet,' only to sputter and fizzle to something less than impressive. The problem is that the precise composition and physical structure of any cometary chunk is hard to predict, as is its reaction to increasing temperatures. No two cometary bodies are the same."But we keep hoping, because a bright comet is something amazing, and over centuries and millennia there have been some truly great ones. Last century, in 1910, the "Great January Comet of 1910' (C/1910 A1) was visible during the day and lasted a couple of months. The Great Comet of 1882 became bright enough in September of that year (around its closest approach to the Sun) to be visible in the sky "adjacent" to the Sun. And there have been many more witnessed across human history."
"Comet ISON is looking promising. On January 17th NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft (the surviving mother craft of the Deep Impact mission to collide a copper impact probe with comet 9P/Tempel - which it did successfully in 2005) was able to snap a series of images of ISON from a distance of about 493 million miles, as the cometary body approaches about 4.8 Earth orbital radii (astronomical units) from the Sun."Here is a time lapse movie of these pictures, if you look carefully you'll see that already there are signs of a glowing tail some 40,000 miles long. It's possible that ISON will not disappoint."
"All comets present a smorgasbord of scientific data. Their tails of particles and dust providing insights to the streaming solar wind and interplanetary magnetic fields, and their contents providing insight to the rich chemistry of our proto-planetary system more than 4 billion years ago."Oort cloud objects are also intriguing because they may represent material stolen from our stellar siblings. A long-standing problem has been that the number of long-period comets seems rather high compared to our expectations for the population density of an Oort cloud formed from icy material flung outwards during planet formation."In fact the numbers are amazingly discrepant. While most models of solar system formation suggest there could be some 6 billion icy chunks in the Oort cloud, the comet counts indicate a population of about 400 billion. Quite a conundrum."In 2010 "Hal Levison and colleagues" used computer simulations to demonstrate that this apparent over-richness of cometary bodies could be explained if our Sun had emerged from its stellar birth cluster with more than its fair share of these outer pieces. In other words, dynamical pulling and shoving with its sister suns resulted in the acquisition of a vast number of alien cometary bodies."
"So not only might ISON be a bright and beautiful creature as it approaches the Sun, it could be truly a visitor from the stars."ABOUT THE AUTHOR:" Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His latest book is 'Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos', and he is working on 'The Copernicus Complex' (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.) Follow on Twitter "@caleb scharf"."
"Based on reports published by China's space agency, Sergio Toscano, director for Superior Research in Missions, understood that in the manner of the comet Elenin could be future a UFO."Nap the comet, discovered in December last appointment, Chinese scientists say that is everything they called clump, which means spherical clump, or perhaps alien spacecraft," understood Toscano.According to the report quotes the astronomer charge, the space construction would be found in the comet's tail and was analyzed after the resonant signals that came off of an nobody formation "unusual and perplexing."In the dialect of Toscano, the Chinese maintain understood that the spacecraft is stationed in the exceptionally position for ninety soul, "PREMATURELY THAT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS POTENTIAL FROM AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL POLISH," understood Argentine scientist.[Crack in the sphere of to take to mean unreserved article]
