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Well you could imagine Edwin Holmes discovering this thing during the outburst it went through on 6th Novmeber,1892, what went through his mind, just like the Transit of Venus was to Cook, this is how they must have seen it all them years ago!
Whats interesting about it is that we dont know what mechanisms caused the outburst, it could be a build up of CO gases which caused a rupture of the surface exposing fresh ices to sunlight which then sublimate and release dust particles, mostly microns in size, which reflect sunlight causing the brightening.....others believe that amorphous ices, when they warm up, begin to crystallize creating pressure under the surface which then cracks and spews out CO and other gases/dust......or it could be a part of the loosely bound nucleus that has split off creating the outburst, or it could be that i has impacted with something like an asteroid..............
The good thing is that is a short period comet, approx. 7 years, and perhaps a cheap spacecraft could be sent to image the nucleus on its next close approach to find out what happened!
Last edited by Outbackmanyep; 05-11-2007 at 06:06 PM.
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