Special Blog Post:
The Moment of a Comet
At left is a morning picture of C/2006 P1, "Comet McNaught," so named for Robert McNaught, who found it as a faint smudge on a photograph taken in early August 2006 at the Siding Spring Observatory. The comet, a small celestial body making a brief visit to the inner solar system, is traveling on a trajectory that is making it one of the brightest of its kind in decades.On January 12, Comet McNaught reached perihelion at only 16 million miles from the sun, which slung it around to emerge for people on Earth as an evening flare quietly shining in the low southern skies. It has a round, fuzzy head of volatile gas and dust, and a short, slightly delta-shaped tail of dust particles falling away. In the coming nights, it will be visible later into dusk, but it will be getting fainter as it slips away from the sun and Earth. Soon, it will be too dim to see with the naked eye.
Because it came in on such a tight trajectory, the sun's gravity has probably given the comet so much additional speed that it now has "escape velocity" from the solar system. That means it will never return. It will cruise out into the cold, stark emptiness of interstellar space, where it will forever slip through the bright darkness of faint galactic gravity fields and soft star winds, nothing but a tiny speck of ice and dust never again to be seen by human eyes, almost certainly never again to be sensed by any sentient being like us.
But we saw it; and in that almost meaningless moment when it was warmed by the sun, it was simply beautiful. If that matters when you think about comets, then let it matter when you think about yourself.
Published 1/13/2007 12:28:00 PM
<< 21 Comments Total
I saw it last night for the first time right after the sun dropped below my horizon. Too bright and hazy to see much of a developed tail, but fun none the less.
Good afternoon, Mr. Goat.
In the late '90s, I saw Comet West on many nights, once from about 30,000 feet in a jetliner.
I figured West was going to be the one bright comet for my lifetime, but then I get to see this one. Comet West was attended by no particularly dire events in the world that I recall, and I figure we got lucky.
Let's hope the run of luck continues.
The Dark Wraith is, however, not a superstitious fellow by nature, of course.
[What with being a wraith and all.]
Good morning Mr. Wraith,
I forgot to add to my previous post that spaceweather.com has a nice gallery of photos from around the world.
I recall as a young kid seeing a very bright one, and since then comets have fascinated me. It may have been Ikeya-Seki or Bennett (or both), but it was in that time frame. I don't recall seeing West. I enjoyed Hale-Bopp because at the time I was living in an area of few lights.
Bon Weekend, Mr. Wraith,
Thank you for the kick-in-the-arse that is your frighteningly appropriate prose. And thank you for the gift of that last sentence--it was needed and appreciated.
Two nights ago I went out east of town to where the horizion is excellent with my trusty 12x80s. It was beautiful. I agree Oh Dark One, after I saw a bright comet back in the later 60's I figured that would maybe it unless I survived to Haley, but I have been lucky as well, with several naked-eye ones and even more in a scope. I was really fortunate when Haiakataki(sp?) was evidenced form a relatively high and dark location in north Georgia, the tail streched at least 30*.
Just heard that the new Mayor where I used to work has canned several of the individuals that were responsible for my situation, on Tuesday I may go have speaks with him.
Pretty Cool
Somehow your last comment reminded me that, with the possible exception of the hydrogen, virtually every other atom in our bodies has at one point or another been part of a star, many (most?) of them more than once, or so I believe.
Am I correct in that, or are there other known sources of fusion out there that could accomplish the same task of transforming a simple element into a complex one?
- oddjob
Fusion up to a point, if I recall, iron, then supernovas. Heavy elements spread throughout the cosmos. Add a dozen billion years and the results are amazing.
Right, but the supernovae still create new, heavier elements via fusion, just in a different scenario.
- oddjob
Agreed. but it's funny that it takes stellar evilution to create elements up to #94. Takes a little more time than to boil water, just don't watch the pot.
A supernova must be one of the best examples of the stuff hitting the fan.
Strange universe.
Good evening, OddJob.
Reaching back to my days in astronomy and astrophysics, I am fairly sure that fusion will occur on the surface of a neutron star in a binary with a normal star if a sufficient layer of material has settled onto the surface of the dense neutron star. In fact, this is part and parcel of some "nova" explosions, which are nothing more than period nuclear detonations of that material once it has compacted so much that the nuclear reactions around the interface between the neutron star and the aggregated material that has landed on it have enough energy to overcome the powerful gravitational gradient.
Going one step further, a rapidly spinning neutron star will, of course create a "migration" of accreting materials toward the poles, where you'll then see a "spotlight" effect. Take those polar beams and throw in a nice wobble, and what do you get? Ah! a very cool "pulsating" light as observed from some place like, oh, say, Earth. But that bleed-off obviously mitigates the other circumstance where the neutron star merely sucks matter from the normal star, and that material builds up until you get the "puff" of a nova. It's those kinds of ejecta from typical novae that you'll find heavy nuclei being spewed.
As far as other processes go that could produce heavier elements, if I'm remember anomalous atmospheres and envelopes correctly, accretion disks around black holes can pile up to critical densities that trigger brief, runaway fusion reactions. This dynamic would also be experienced in galactic black holes, but most likely the kind associated with quasars, where a whole lot of material otherwise doomed to fall into the super-massive, primordial black holes never to be available to the cosmos for building blocks instead gets piled up in super-luminous, high-energy plasma fields streaming around the hole, finally going critical and causing what might be either a sustained fusion reaction in a torus or possibly a periodic "blowout."
I suppose there are a few other generators of heavy nuclei out there, but some are likely not well understood to us right now. I think I remember one astrophysicist mentioning something about thin plasmas (extra-galactic, I suspect) that could interact to do a slow-cook of heavies, but I cannot recall the details of how that was supposed to work.
The Dark Wraith is getting too old to keep his mental files in easily accessible order.
Dark Wraith, simply beautiful. Thank you.
Welcome to The Dark Wraith Forums, Tracey.
we are{truely} stardust
we are golden
and we've got to get ourself back to the garden...
Snuffy beat me to it. Those lyrics came to mind immediately.
Unfortunately, we had rain and missed out on the light show here on the island in the ocean. I was looking forward to it being an avid comet watcher and all.
I also popped over here to see if the Dark One is ok.
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
An excellent post.
Thank you.
DW,
Curious that comet appearing just now. In older times they were harbingers of potential doom.
Maybe there's a micron of truth to the ways.
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
It would be interesting to correlate the comets visible in our lifetimes with what was going on in the world at the time. I remember hale-bopp, and Haley's and another one in the mid seventies, but cannot remember what was going on.
Oh, there was one when I lived in DC(can't remember the name), and during those two years Nixon left power.
In older times they were harbingers of potential doom.
Maybe there's a micron of truth to the ways. -- father tyme
Father, you might be interested in the "SOTT Special Reports" section of the Quantum Future Groups site, which has several articles entitled "Meteors, Asteroids, Comets, and NEOs".
Then too, there is Knight-Jadczyk's article entitled Cometary Showers, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?.
Halley’s Comet’s last appearance happened to coincide with my 30th birthday. I first saw it in Japan - hanging low in the evening sky out over the ocean, not far off the top of Mt. Fuji. It wasn’t as bright as I expected – nowhere near as bright as my father once described to me. He had seen Halley’s last visitation from the deck of a ship somewhere off the coast of Spain. He said it was visible during the day – but I’m thinking he got Halley’s mixed up with that other comet appearing in 1910. My father was nine years old and a cabin boy back then. So when Halley’s came round again I made sure to take a good, long look. It was cold, and the comet seemed to have a reddish cast. Didn’t matter. Big or small it signified change. I looked up at Halley’s Comet and promised myself a new life.
Barely weeks later, at midnight on my birthday's eve - I was in California standing atop one of the highest peaks of the Santa Luchia mountain range near Big Sur. This was a spot I used to haunt in my younger days. It took quite a hike to get up there - but the view was magnificent. I was accompanied by my oldest friend and the man I eventually married. This time the comet rode high - surrounded by very bright stars. It wasn't as visible as in Japan; but the moment seemed sweeter just the same. My life HAD changed. In that moment everything seemed connected – me to my father, my life to a no longer tenuous future. And I made myself another promise. I promised to be alive the next time Halley made its appearance. My father lived through two incarnations. I wanted to as well. Will it happen? Who knows? I’ll say one thing, though – if I did make it that long - I’d be one hell of an old broad!
No, he didn't get it confused, for it truly was the great comet of 1910. It passed quite close to Earth that time (the Earth may have even passed through the tail, but I can't remember for certain). This time when it got close it was much further away, so it was dim. I looked for it in suburban Philadelphia, but never could find it for certain. The first comets I saw were in 1996 and '97.
- oddjob