- 3962 - COMETS - erupt like volcanoes? The newly discovered comet “C/2023 A3” is making a close approach around the sun for the first time in 80,000 years, and might be as bright as a star in fall 2024.
------------ 3962
- COMETS -
erupt like volcanoes?
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- This comet
was first noted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS)
telescope project in South Africa on February 22, 2062. Skywatchers around the world have since
observed it in new and old images, with the earliest detection found in images
taken by a wide-field camera on a telescope at Palomar Observatory in
California on December 12, 2022.
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- Currently,
“C/2023 A3” is between Saturn and Jupiter traveling at a 180,610 mph and is
likely to make its closest approach to Earth on October 13, 2024.
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- The comet
orbits the sun only once every 80,660 years. This trip around, the comet will
make its closest approach to the sun, known as perihelion on September 28,
2024.
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- All of this
depends on the comet staying in one piece. Comets are loosely bound balls of
ice, rock and dust, and they often break up when they approach the sun and
start to heat up.
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- If the
comet does hang together, it may become visible in amateur telescopes in June,
2024 before passing between Earth and the sun on its way to perihelion.
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- At
perihelion, the comet will be low on the eastern horizon and may not be visible
to many viewers on Earth; as it swings past Earth on its outbound journey into
the solar system, it will appear higher in the sky as the comet moves through
Serpens Caput (the western part of the constellation Serpens) and into the
constellation Ophiuchus in the evening sky.
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- As viewed
from Earth, the comet may be as luminous as the brightest stars in the sky.
This is brighter than the green comet “C/2022 E3” that just passed by Earth in
January. That comet had a brightness of around magnitude +4.6, just visible to
the naked eye. The new comet may have a brightness of magnitude 0.7,
potentially peaking at magnitude -5, similar to Venus at its brightest. (Lower
numbers mean greater brightness on the stellar magnitude scale.)
-
- “C/2023
A3” is the most promising comet in years to provide naked-eye views but cautioning
that these hopes could be dashed.
-
- Astronomers
accurately predicted that another icy volcanic “comet 29P” would erupt after
noticing changes in its brightness leading up to its latest explosion.
-
- The bizarre
volcanic comet erupt like a "Champagne bottle," spraying gas and ice
through the solar system like sparkling wine. The unusual explosion was a cause
for celebration because, for the first time, the researchers successfully
predicted it was going to happen.
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- The volatile
comet, known as 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann (29P), is around 37 miles wide and takes around 14.9 years to orbit the
sun. As well as being volcanic, 29P has an unusually circular orbit for a comet
and rotates much more slowly than expected.
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- It 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 nearer Jupiter.
-
- Unlike
volcanoes on Earth, which eject scalding-hot magma and ash from the planet's
mantle, 29P spits out extremely cold gases and ice from its supercold interior.
This unusual type of volcanic activity is known as cryovolcanism, or "cold
volcanism."
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- On April 2,
2023, scientists observed a sharp spike in 29P's brightness, which was caused
by light reflecting off recently ejected gas and ice, or cryomagma, in the
comet's coma, the cloud of gas that surrounds a comet's body, or nucleus.
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- The
eruption was likely quite sizable given that the coma outshone the nucleus by a
factor of more than 10. The eruption was
"like a cork popping from a champagne bottle.
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- 29P is one
of the most volcanically active comets in the solar system, and researchers
have seen it blow its top hundreds of times before. In November, 2022, the icy
comet experienced a massive eruption that spewed out more than 1 million tons
of cryomagma, making it the second-largest explosion of its kind recorded in
the last 12 years.
-
- But, like
with all other past eruptions from 29P, astronomers had no idea that the huge
eruption was imminent before it happened.
However, this time, researchers strongly suspected that 29P was going to
erupt.
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-
Cryovolcanic bodies, which include a handful of other comets and several
solar system moons 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 a comet's icy interior to sublime from solid
to gas, which causes a buildup of pressure beneath the crust, although some gas
continually leaks out at the same time. When radiation from the sun weakens the
crust, that pressure causes the outer shell to crack, and cryomagma shoots out
into space.
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- On April 1,
2023, astronomers noticed that the light
surrounding the comet's nucleus was "the faintest we have ever seen it.
This was a sign that less gas was leaking out from the comet's outer crust than
usual, suggesting pressure was building up at an increased rate within the
comet. This made an eruption "highly likely to happen."
-
April 17, 2023 COMETS
- erupt like volcanoes? 3962
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--- Monday, April 17, 2023 ---------------------------
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