A new 20Km wide comet has been seen that is 3 AU from the Sun and it appears to have come from a different star system.
Known as Comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) - has a hyperbolic orbit eccentricity of 3.2, based on current observation.
Thanks for that. All over the news also and so people seem interested.
I am sure a lot of astronomers will have their spectrographic analysis underway and we might hear what the tail is made up of.
Perhaps some our own members could tell us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by billdan
A new 20Km wide comet has been seen that is 3 AU from the Sun and it appears to have come from a different star system.
Known as Comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) - has a hyperbolic orbit eccentricity of 3.2, based on current observation.
It looks like a F2 hyperstar setup, there is no room to have a camera and focuser behind the mirror on that fork mount.
Appears us Sth Hemisphere folk are going to get the best chance of seeing it around the 10th Dec at its closest approach to the sun. Its DEC will be -20° near the constellation Sextans.
Get ready for more interstellar objects - Yale astronomers
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Shelton, Yale University
Gregory Laughlin and Malena Rice weren't exactly surprised a few weeks ago when they learned that a second interstellar object had made its way into our solar system.
The Yale University astronomers had just put the finishing touches on a new study suggesting that these strange, icy visitors from other planets are going to keep right on coming. We can expect a few large objects showing up every year, they say; smaller objects entering the solar system could reach into the hundreds each year.
The study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Originally Posted by Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, Queen's University Belfast
New frontier for science as astronomers detect gas molecules in comet from another star
An international team of astronomers, including Queen’s University Belfast researchers, have made a historic discovery, detecting gas molecules in a comet which has tumbled into our solar system from another star.
It is the first time that astronomers have been able to detect this type of material in an interstellar object.
The discovery marks an important step forward for science as it will now allow scientists to begin deciphering exactly what these objects are made of and how our home solar system compares with others in our galaxy.
“For the first time we are able to accurately measure what an interstellar visitor is made of, and compare it with our own Solar system” said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of the Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast.
Comet Borisov was discovered by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov in August. Observations over the following 12 days showed that it was not orbiting the Sun, but was just passing through the Solar system on its own path around our galaxy.
By 24 September it had been renamed 2I/Borisov, the second interstellar object ever discovered by astronomers. Unlike the first such object discovered two years ago, 1I/'Oumuamua, this object appeared as a faint comet, with a surrounding atmosphere of dust particles, and a short tail.
Alan Fitzsimmons and colleagues from Europe, the United States and Chile used the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands to detect the gas in the comet. But doing so was tricky.
He said: “Our first attempt was on Friday 13 September, but we were unlucky and were thwarted by the brightness of the sky so close to the Sun. But the next attempt was successful.”
New image of 2I/Borisov from Keck Observatory - 26 Nov 2019
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Shelton, Yale University, 26 Nov 2019
Yale astronomers have taken a new, close-up image of the interstellar comet 2l/Borisov.
2l/Borisov, first spotted this summer, continues to draw nearer to Earth and will reach its closest approach — about 190 million miles — in early December. Researchers believe the comet formed in a solar system beyond ours and was ejected into interstellar space as a consequence of a near-collision with a planet in its original solar system.
Yale astronomers Pieter van Dokkum, Cheng-Han Hsieh, Shany Danieli, and Gregory Laughlin captured the image Nov. 24 using the W.M. Keck Observatory’s Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer in Hawaii. They’ve also created an image that shows how the comet would look alongside planet Earth.
According to van Dokkum the comet’s tail, shown in the new image, is nearly 100,000 miles long, which is 14 times the size of Earth. “It’s humbling to realize how small Earth is next to this visitor from another solar system,” van Dokkum said.
Laughlin noted that 2l/Borisov is evaporating as it gets closer to Earth, releasing gas and fine dust in its tail. “Astronomers are taking advantage of Borisov’s visit, using telescopes such as Keck to obtain information about the building blocks of planets in systems other than our own,” Laughlin said.
The solid nucleus of the comet is only about a mile wide. As it began reacting to the Sun’s warming effect, the comet has taken on a “ghostly” appearance, the researchers said.
New Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet 2I/Borisov
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart Wolpert | December 12, 2019, UCLA
A new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope provides important new details about the first interstellar comet astronomers have seen in our solar system.
The comet, called Comet 2I/Borisov (the “I” stands for interstellar), was spotted near a spiral galaxy known as 2MASX J10500165-0152029. It was approximately 203 million miles from Earth when the image was taken on Nov. 16.
“Data from the Hubble Space Telescope give us the best measure of the size of comet 2I/Borisov’s nucleus, which is the really important part of the comet,” said David Jewitt, a UCLA professor of planetary science and astronomy who analyzed and interpreted the data from the new image.
Jewitt collaborated on the new analysis with colleagues from the University of Hawaii, Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. The scientists were surprised to learn that the nucleus has a radius measuring only about half of a kilometer — or less than one-fifteenth the size that earlier investigations suggested it might be.
“That is important because knowing its size helps us to determine the total number, and mass, of other similar objects in the solar system and the Milky Way,” Jewitt said. “2I/Borisov is the first known interstellar comet, and we would like to learn how many others there are.”
The comet is traveling at a breathtaking speed of 110,000 miles per hour — one of the fastest comets ever seen, Jewitt said. More commonly, comets travel at about half that speed.
Crimean astronomer Gennady Borisov discovered the comet on Aug. 30, using a telescope he built. Based on precise measurements of its changing position, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center calculated a likely orbit for the comet, which shows that it came from elsewhere in the galaxy. Jewitt said its precise point of origin is unknown.
A second Hubble Space Telescope image of the comet, taken on Dec. 9, shows the comet even closer to Earth, approximately 185 million miles from Earth, he said.
Comets are icy bodies thought to be fragments left behind when planets form in the outer parts of planetary systems.
Observations by numerous telescopes show that the comet’s chemical composition is similar to that of comets previously observed in our solar system, which provides evidence that comets also form around other stars, Jewitt said. By mid-2020, the comet will have zoomed past Jupiter on its way back into interstellar space, where it will drift for billions of years, Jewitt said.
Half a kilometre is still a large chunk of ice. I think the one that caused the 4.5 km Goss Bluff crater was about 1km.
Hi Ray,
And if it hit us whilst it was moving at 177,000 km/h and in the worse
case combined with the Earth's orbital speed of 107,000 km/h head-on,
then it would certainly get everyone's attention.
2I/borisov
Attempt to catch boris, on dec 6, at Lowe observatory at Bendemeer, about 2 days after the fires approached the dome 3 times and was water bombed lights at 10 secs, ISO 25000, stacked with AutoStakkert, altitude 1100 m, some smoke 3 comets spotted that night by Chris Wyatt, the local comet watcher, all around Mag. 15. The reason for short exposures and very high ISO, was because periodic error in RA and no guiding. Also the collimation is poor because had to rotate the tube for each comet to be able to access the eyepiece, It's a big scope. we would have had to collimate before each comet and we had no time, sunrise was approaching, as It was It ruined 40 light frames.
We are having trouble stacking and any help would be appreciated. We would prefer stars trailing and the comet stationary.
.
. https://get.google.com/albumarchive/...CL-_8JyQicTwBQ
2I/borisov
Attempt to catch boris, on dec 6, at Lowe observatory at Bendemeer, about 2 days after the fires approached the dome 3 times and was water bombed once, they left the red dye out of the water. There about 21 fire fighters from Dubbo and Wilcannia camped up there for about a week. they did a bloody good job!
>snip
. https://drive.google.com/file/d/17WB...82tjQbyyH/view
. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ix...I3gfxBkQNw6xaV
Hi Barry
The 1st http link would not work for me - it asked for a User sign in and I don't have a Google Account.
The 2nd link warned that it would not open as the file was over 200MB.