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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Sept 28, 2005 22:50:07 GMT
I was just checking the SOHO LASCO C3 images when i spotted this bright comet to the lower right of the sun complete with tail. A great suprise! Its reckoned to be a potential very bright object....
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Post by markdj on Sept 29, 2005 8:26:59 GMT
Wow Martin. Are there any details on this comet. It looks to be quite small? What are the chances it will be bright after rounding the Sun?
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Post by markdj on Sept 29, 2005 8:51:53 GMT
Martin I had a look this moring at the SOHO and the comet is gone? looking at the last images taken it seems that there were a number of "lines" around the image. eg. have a looking at the 0030 image this morning. sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-c3.htmlWhat is going on?
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Post by johnmc9929 on Sept 29, 2005 14:33:36 GMT
It was still on the 0126 image but gone on the 0220 one, think that one is a gone!
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Sept 29, 2005 15:27:32 GMT
It appears to have disintegrated as most of the Kreutz sungrazers do when near the sun. It would not have become visible in a dark sky anyway had it survived. However the good news according to the BAA is that there has been a sucession of bright Kreutz comets on the SOHO images lately and they predict that a much bigger and brighter fragment might appear anytime! The last 'bright' fragment was Ikeya- Seki of 1965!! It would certainly pay to sweep the morning and evening twilight close to the sun with binos these days If i had of spotted that comet earlier i might have got credit for it but a Japanese SOHO comet hunter found it earlier. Pays to check those images everyday....you never know....
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Sept 29, 2005 15:30:45 GMT
Yea most of the sungrazers are very small comets though that one looked bigger than usual. The comet must have fizzled out or even hit the sun. Theres certainly nothing left of it now. All i can see is the Corornal streamers and a few cosmic ray hits.
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Sept 29, 2005 16:19:43 GMT
I have just heard that someone phoned the SOHO scientists on my behalf regarding the comet and they told him that had i reported it a few hours earlier then i would have been credited with the discovery! - That was close! Apparently it was very faint then suddenly surged in brightness as it neared the sun.
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Post by weathergirl on Sept 29, 2005 16:24:08 GMT
Could anyone explain to me how the SOHO LASCO C3 images work?
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Sept 29, 2005 16:26:20 GMT
LASCO (Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph) is able to take images of the solar corona by blocking the light coming directly from the Sun with an occulter disk, creating an artificial eclipse within the instrument itself. The position of the solar disk is indicated in the images by the white circle. The most prominent feature of the corona are usually the coronal streamers, those nearly radial bands that can be seen both in C2 and C3. Occasionally, a coronal mass ejection can be seen being expelled away from the Sun and crossing the fields of view of both coronagraphs. The shadow crossing from the lower left corner to the center of the image is the support for the occulter disk. C2 images show the inner solar corona up to 8.4 million kilometers (5.25 million miles) away from the Sun. C3 images have a larger field of view: They encompass 32 diameters of the Sun. To put this in perspective, the diameter of the images is 45 million kilometers (about 30 million miles) at the distance of the Sun, or half of the diameter of the orbit of Mercury. Many bright stars can be seen behind the Sun. Hope this helps Sonia
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Post by weathergirl on Sept 29, 2005 16:43:21 GMT
Thanks Martin, much appreciated. Very technical, but think ill beable to remember that
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