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Post by meeshhead on Feb 14, 2009 1:30:49 GMT
As we speak, Comet Lulin is making its way towards our planet. It will be at its closest on Feb. 23rd, when it will be approx. 38 million miles from Earth. It'll be around halfway between the Sun and the Earth. That's pretty close. You will be able to see it with the naked eye for over 2 days.  Comet Lulin Approaches Credit & Copyright: Paolo Candy (Cimini Astronomical Observatory) Explanation: How bright will Comet Lulin become? No one knows for sure. Although it is notoriously difficult to accurately predict the brightness of newly discovered comets, Comet Lulin could well become visible to the unaided eye later this month. As Comet Lulin moves into the northern sky in mid February to rise around midnight, it should at least be spotted by comet watchers with binoculars and a good sky chart. Tracking observations indicate that the comet officially designated C/2007 N3 (Lulin) has now swung by the Sun and is approaching Earth on a trajectory that will bring it within half the Earth-Sun distance in late February. Comet Lulin's orbit indicates that this is likely the comet's first trip into the inner Solar System. The comet was discovered by Quanzhi Ye of Sun Yat-sen University on images obtained by Chi-Sheng Lin at the Lu-Lin Observatory of National Central University. In this picture, taken from Italy last Friday, are Comet Lulin's coma and tails, one tail pointing away from the Sun, and an anti-tail -- dust that trails the comet in its orbit and may appear to point toward the Sun.In the Spring of 1997, this is what I saw from my back yard (this isn't my personal pic, but this is what I saw). Comet Hale Bopp. The largest comet on record! It was visible for about an hour that night. I was amazed. I love this stuff!
I think Mischa Anne should have a comet named after her.  |
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Post by Jo Pearson on Feb 14, 2009 2:49:20 GMT
She'd have to discover it first - that's the rule in naming them, as they're always named after the person (or people) who first discover them!!
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Post by meeshhead on Feb 14, 2009 3:06:56 GMT
She'd have to discover it first - that's the rule in naming them, as they're always named after the person (or people) who first discover them!! I'm aware of that, Jo. I just figured that since Meesh's beauty is so ethereal, she should have a comet named after her. And BTW, Comet Lulin was named after the observatory where it was first discovered, not the person. "The comet was discovered by Quanzhi Ye of Sun Yat-sen University on images obtained by Chi-Sheng Lin at the Lu-Lin Observatory of National Central University."
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Post by Jo Pearson on Feb 14, 2009 17:00:11 GMT
Yeah, sometimes they name them after the team, satellite or observatory - Although it usually is the person (or people) themselves...
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Post by meeshluv on Feb 17, 2009 15:20:51 GMT
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Post by meeshhead on Feb 19, 2009 4:36:19 GMT
 Comet Lulin at 8:11 PM tonight.The pic was taken just a few hours ago. Astronomers say that this comet has the weirdest orbit on record. Very unpredictable. Hmmm. That sounds a little ominous.  |
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Post by meeshluv on Feb 19, 2009 20:21:35 GMT
Astronomers say that this comet has the weirdest orbit on record. Very unpredictable. Hmmm. That sounds a little ominous. Don't worry, Irvin - Obama hasn't been on the phone to Bruce Willis just yet!!!.....  ;D |
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Post by meeshhead on Feb 19, 2009 22:25:50 GMT
Astronomers say that this comet has the weirdest orbit on record. Very unpredictable. Hmmm. That sounds a little ominous. Don't worry, Irvin - Obama hasn't been on the phone to Bruce Willis just yet!!!..... ;D  |
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Post by G-Man on Feb 20, 2009 1:58:54 GMT
Don't worry, Irvin - Obama hasn't been on the phone to Bruce Willis just yet!!!..... ;D Just Willis? I'd rather play it safe and get Chuck Norris as well, he could roundhouse it away. |
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Post by meeshhead on Feb 20, 2009 2:10:43 GMT
Just Willis? I'd rather play it safe and get Chuck Norris as well, he could roundhouse it away. Actually, I don't know what we could do to avert a comet collision with the Earth. If an asteroid was on a collision course, a missile could knock it off course. But a comet is mostly ice, dust and rocks. I hope we never have to find out. |
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Post by meeshluv on Feb 20, 2009 14:32:34 GMT
Just Willis? I'd rather play it safe and get Chuck Norris as well, he could roundhouse it away. Actually, I don't know what we could do to avert a comet collision with the Earth. If an asteroid was on a collision course, a missile could knock it off course. But a comet is mostly ice, dust and rocks. I hope we never have to find out. Well, you're touching on a couple of my pet subjects here - Astronomy and nuclear weapons. I'm actually trying to write an article for a scientific journal at the moment on this very area... Contrary to popular belief, comets are a lot more robust than people think, and it would be possible to deflect one enough for it to miss us - The change in velocity needed is so tiny (about 1mm per second) that, in theory at least, it shouldn't be a problem. All you need to do is use the right method, and this is where things start going wrong in the plans, because most of the comet/asteroid deflection plans people propose are full of holes and errors which would cause them to fail. All these ideas about using giant lenses or mirrors to vapourise the surface and create a "jet" of material which would act like a rocket and push it off course fail to take into account the fact that the object would be rotating, and so you can never concentrate the energy in one spot long enough to cause vapourisation of the surface. And this is also why the ideas about shooting bits of the object off the surface using linear magnetic guns would fail - the rotation of the object means that each piece would go off in a different direction and you wouldn't get a uniform thrust vector. High-speed impacts and surface detonations of nuclear devices either wouldn't have any real effect, or would just shatter the object, turning it into a giant shotgun blast when it hits Earth and making the damage much worse. And proximity detonations of a normal nuclear device wouldn't have any effect at all, because a nuclear device needs an atmosphere around it to create a blast wave. The ONLY way to do it would be to use a very specific, very unusual, and almost completely unknown type of nuclear device called a "nuclear directed-kinetic-energy weapon" (NDKEW), which would work in space without an atmosphere, and would have enough "punch" to deflect an incoming object - if you made it big enough... NDKEW's are VERY highly classified, and so specific that they could (in theory) take out a single city block without causing any significant damage to the surrounding blocks. By clever design, and the exploitation of little-known effects of a nuclear detonation, you can build a device where most of the blast is channelled in a specific direction, in the form of material held within the device, which is then projected away from it at incredibly high velocity in a focussed "jet". When this "jet" hits a solid object, it transfers most of its momentum to it, pushing it away, and that's how you'd use it to deflect a comet or asteroid. And that, in very simple terms, is how we'd deflect a comet or asteroid heading our way... |
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Post by meeshhead on Feb 20, 2009 15:17:18 GMT
I'm very impressed with your knowledge in this area, Adrian!
It's good to know that we could do something to ward off impending doom. The subject is very fascinating.
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Post by meeshluv on Feb 21, 2009 15:47:53 GMT
I'm very impressed with your knowledge in this area, Adrian! It's good to know that we could do something to ward off impending doom. The subject is very fascinating. Thanks, Irvin! I've been interested in astronomy and spaceflight since I was about 10, and even had to teach astronomy at times. And I've been interested in nuclear weapons since I was about 12 - I've been writing a book about their testing for years, and have built up a huge library of books and declassified files on them. So topics like this really do combine some of my interests in quite a worthwhile way... |
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Post by Jo Pearson on Feb 21, 2009 18:54:19 GMT
 <- Adrian... |
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Post by meeshluv on Feb 22, 2009 11:22:09 GMT
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