- 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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