Thursday, February 2, 2023

3858 - COMETS - volcanic activity?

 

     -  3858  -  COMETS  -  volcanic activity?  -    Viewers who have a clear view of the night sky away from significant light pollution will be able to spot the comet without a telescope.    Look to the northern sky between the Big Dipper and the North Star.   It will look like a small fuzzy patch of light, possibly slightly greenish.


            ----------------------  3858  -   COMETS  -  volcanic activity?

            -    How to watch the rare green comet whiz past Earth tonight (February 1, 2023), the green comet C/2022 E3 ZTF will make its closest approach to Earth since the age of the Neanderthals.

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            -   Some comets appear to glow green when ultraviolet sunlight vaporizes carbon molecules in the comet's head.  It will make its closest approach to Earth since the age of the Neanderthals February1 to 2, and you might be able to spot it.

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            -    The comet, known as C/2022 E3 (ZTF), will come within 26.4 million miles  of our planet, its closest approach in about 50,000 years.  The comet has been brightening in the night sky since January and will pass between the orbits of Mars and Earth over the next couple of nights, traveling at around 128,500 mph.

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            -    As comets whiz by the sun, the star's energy vaporizes the comet's ices into gas, which form a coma, a tenuous, short-lived atmosphere around the rocky body. The color of that coma depends on the makeup of its gas. In the case of Comet C/2022 E3, some of that gas contains diatomic carbon, a molecule made up of two fused carbon atoms.

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            -    Atr the same time a bizarre, volcanic comet has violently erupted, spewing out more than 1 million tons of gas, ice and the potential building blocks of life into the solar system.

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            -    The volatile comet,  “29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann (29P)”, is around 37 miles wide and takes around 14.9 years to orbit the sun. 29P is believed to be the most volcanically active comet in the solar system.

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            -     29P is one of around 100 comets, known as "centaurs," that have been pushed from the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy comets that lurk beyond Neptune, into a closer orbit around the sun between those of Jupiter and Neptune.

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            -   On November 22, 2022,  an amateur astronomer named Patrick Wiggins noticed that 29P had drastically increased in brightness. Subsequent observations made by other astronomers revealed that this spike in luminosity was the result of a massive volcanic eruption, the second largest seen on 29P in the last 12 years. The largest eruption during this time was a huge outburst in September 2021.

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            -   The explosion was followed by two smaller outbursts on November 27 and  29.  Unlike volcanoes on Earth, which eject scalding-hot magma and ash from the mantle, 29P spits out extremely cold gases and ice from its core. This unusual type of volcanic activity is known as cryovolcanism, or "cold volcanism."

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            -    Cryovolcanic bodies, which include a handful of other comets and moons in the solar system such as Saturn's Enceladus, Jupiter's Europa and Neptune's Triton, have a surface crust surrounding a mainly solid icy core.

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            -   Over time, radiation from the sun can cause the comets' icy interiors to sublime from solid to gas, which causes a buildup of pressure beneath the crust. When radiation from the sun also weakens the crust, that pressure causes the outer shell to crack, and cryomagma shoots out into space. 

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            -   The cryomagma from comets like 29P is mainly composed of carbon monoxide and nitrogen gas, as well as some icy solids and liquid hydrocarbons, which may have provided some of the raw materials from which life originated on Earth.

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            -    The ejecta from the most recent eruption of 29P stretched up to 34,800 miles away from the comet and is traveling at speeds of up to 805 mph. The plume probably comprised more than one million tons of ejecta.

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            -    Photographs of the erupting comet also show that the plume formed an irregular Pac-Man-like shape, which suggests the eruption originated from a single point or region on the comet's surface.

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            -    These observations back up previous research that suggests 29P's eruptions are linked to its rotation. Miles and Stoddard-Jones believe that the comet's slower rotation causes solar radiation to absorb more unevenly on the comet, triggering the eruptions. So far eruptions from the comet tend to match up with its 57-day rotation period.

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            -    Researchers also suspect that 29P's most explosive eruptions follow a cycle based on its orbit around the sun. A number of large eruptions were detected between 2008 and 2010, and now two massive explosions have occurred within the last two years. It is therefore likely that there will be least one more major eruption from 29P by the end of 2023.

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            -    29P has a largely circular orbit, meaning it never gets much closer to the sun than its average distance.

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            -    29P has largely been ignored by the astronomical community since its discovery in 1927, but as new evidence emerges about its unusual volcanic activity it is starting to be taken more seriously.

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            February 1, 2023                                              3858                                                                                                                           

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            --------------------- ---  Thursday, February 2, 2023  ---------------------------

             

             

             

             

                     

             

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