Comet Hits Sun... causes a CME?

[zorgon]

Comet Hits Sun... causes a CME?

COMET AND CME:

A comet discovered by amateur astronomers on Friday, Sept. 30th, disintegrated in spectacular fashion the very next day when it plunged into the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the comet's last hours. The end was punctuated by an unexpected explosion:

Watch the movie again. The timing of the CME so soon after the comet dove into the sun suggests a link. But what? There is no known mechanism for comets to trigger solar explosions. Before 2011 most solar physicists would have discounted the events of Oct. 1st as pure coincidence--and pure coincidence is still the most likely explanation. Earlier this year, however, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched another sungrazer disintegrate in the sun's atmosphere. On July 5, 2011, the unnamed comet appeared to interact with plasma and magnetic fields in its surroundings as it fell apart. Could a puny comet cause a magnetic instability that might propagate and blossom into a impressive CME? The question is not so crazy as it once seemed to be.

Comet Strikes Sun - October 3rd 2011 - Space Weather

[zorgon]

Double Whammy - Two bangs for the Buck

DOUBLE ERUPTION: On October 1st, widely-spaced sunspots 1302 and 1305 erupted in quick succession, revealing a long-distance entanglement spanning more than 300,000 km. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the double blast:



Since it was launched in 2010, SDO has observed many "entangled eruptions." Active regions far apart but linked by magnetic fields can explode one after another, with disturbances spreading around the stellar surface domino-style. Saturday's eruption appears to be the latest example.

The part of the eruption centered on sunspot 1305 hurled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth. The relatively slow-moving (500 km/s) cloud is expected to reach our planet on Oct. 5th, possibly causing geomagnetic storms when it arrives. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

DOUBLE ERUPTION: - Space Weather

[hoss58]

Hey Zorgon, watch that soho clip closely, as the eruption begins ,watch the rectangular shape appear in the cloud that forms on the left side of the sun. Cool..... what is that , is there something else there?,just wondering as I watch over and over 

[OPHI13]

Hello zorgon, I had a question to ask about the tail of the ?comet?  why was it as bright as the front of the ?comet? as if it was traveling as fast as the front of the celestial.  Not to mention the distance the bright tailing part was.  Thanks

[zorgon]

Comet NEAT C/2002 V1 2003

As the comet gets closer to the Sun, more and more material streams off... mostly gases that are luminescent. That material is still traveling with the comet at almost the same speed. SOHO cameras also record differently than a normal camera, using other frequencies of light...

Here is one from 2003 Comet Neat


Credit: SOHO Consortium, LASCO, ESA, NASA

Comet Neat Passes an Erupting Sun

As Comet NEAT flared last week, the Sun roared. Just as the comet swooped inside the orbit of Mercury and developed a long and flowing tail of gas and dust, the Sun emitted a huge Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Neither the fortuitous hot ball of solar gas nor the intense glare of sunlight appeared to disrupt the comet's nucleus. The action was too close to the Sun to be easily visible by humans, but the orbiting Sun-pointing SOHO satellite had a clear view of the celestial daredevil show. The above image was taken on February 18 when the comet was so bright it created an artificial horizontal streak on the camera image. During the encounter, Comet NEAT, official designation (C/2002 V1), brightened to second magnitude. An opaque disk blocked the Sun's image. The now-outbound comet remains bright but will surely fade as it moves away from the Sun. Nevertheless, Comet NEAT will likely be visible with binoculars to southern hemisphere observers for the next month.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030224.html



This one was called 'Nibiru' by Nassim Haramein

Physicist Nassim Haramein has video proof that Planet Nibiru has come and gone. A comet almost 2x the size of Jupiter (the largest planet in our solar system) recently passed through our solar system but was never reported on main stream media because the scientists and astrologists "thought we were toast". This comet, which Nissim believes was Nibiru, should have disrupted our solar system due to its mass and gravitational pull. Mercury should have been pulled into the sun while earth should have experienced tidal waves all over the planet. The comet was on track to hit the sun, but a huge sun flare emission veered the comet off course, as it traveled past the sun and out of our solar system. This was visible from the west coast in the early morning in February 2003. Two comets have gone by inside the orbit of Mercury into the sun. Considering the mass and gravitational pull of these objects, "We shouldn't be here. We were given a second chance. We're floating in grace and 'somebody' is taking care of us." In a few days, Nibiru was out of our solar system. With a "comet" of this size, the gravitational force was enormous.

Well for a 'physicist' he doesn't seem to understand simple physics

It seems many people are under the impression that the apparent size of a comet means it has a huge gravitational force... including our 'physicist' above 

But in reality the comet's size gets bigger because of the released gas cloud as it gets closer to the sun. The best recent example of that is Comet 17P/Holmes. At one point it got over 5 times the size of our Sun.

But that was the COMA... the gas cloud... which is very thin and has little mass to create any noticeable gravitational effect. It looks huge because the gas is glowing... the closer it gets, the brighter it is.

Most comets this gas streams behind, but some. like 17P/Holmes also get a huge COMA. Holmes was a special case too as it had an explosion that cause a sudden increase in size.... Also this comet was unique as it was coming towards us so the tail was not easily visible from our viewpoint

17P/Holmes


Three Month Composite of Comet Holmes
Credit & Copyright: John Pane

How has Comet Holmes changed? Since brightening unexpectedly by nearly one million fold in late October, the last three months have found the coma of Comet 17P/Holmes both expanding and fading. This spectacular composite image shows how the coma and tail of Comet Holmes have changed. Due to Earth's changing vantage point, Comet Holmes, out beyond the orbit of Mars, was seen in November nearly head-on, but in recent months is seen more from the side. Additionally, the comet's motion, when combined with Earth's changing perspective, has caused the comet to have shifted relative to the background stars. The curved path of Comet Holmes shows it to be undergoing apparent retrograde motion as the Earth orbits quickly in front of it. The extent of the coma currently makes Comet Holmes over five times the physical size of our Sun. Anecdotal evidence holds that the comet is hard to see without long photographic exposures, but on such exposures the comet may still be an impressive sight.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080205.html

Comet Holmes Bigger Than The Sun

Summary
Formerly, the Sun was the largest object in the Solar System. Now, comet 17P/Holmes holds that distinction.

Spectacular outbursting comet 17P/Holmes exploded in size and brightness on October 24. It continues to expand and is now the largest single object in the Solar system, being bigger than the Sun (see Figure). The diameter of the tenuous dust atmosphere of the comet was measured at 1.4 million kilometers (0.9 million miles) on 2007 November 9 by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. They used observations from a wide-field camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), one of the few professional instruments still capable of capturing the whole comet in one image. Other astronomers involved in the UH program to study the comet include Bin Yang, Nuno Peixinho and David Jewitt. The present eruption of comet Holmes was first reported on October 24 and has continued at a steady 0.5 km/sec (1100 mph) ever since. The comet is an unprecedented half a million times brighter than before the eruption began. This amazing eruption of the comet is produced by dust ejected from a tiny solid nucleus made of ice and rock, only 3.6 km (roughly 2.2 miles) in diameter. [/size

Caption: (Left) Image of comet Holmes from the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on Mauna Kea showing the 1.4 million km diameter coma. The white ''star'' near the center of the coma is in fact the dust-shrouded nucleus. (Right) the Sun and planet Saturn shown at the same scale for comparison. (Sun and Saturn images courtesy of ESA/NASA's SOHO and Voyager projects). [The same image is available here as a 300 dpi tif file.]

The new image also shows the growth of a tail on comet Holmes (the fuzzy region to the lower right in the comet picture), caused by the pressure of sunlight acting on dust grains in the coma. Over the next few weeks and months, the coma and tail are expected to expand even more while the comet will fade as the dust disperses. Comet Holmes showed a double outburst in November 1892 and January 1893. It is not known if the present activity in the comet will follow the pattern from 1892, but continued observations from Mauna Kea are planned to watch for a second outburst. Most comets show small fluctuations in brightness and some have distinct outbursts. The huge event on-going in comet Holmes is unprecedented, however.

The orbit period of comet Holmes is about 6 years, putting it in the class of Jupiter Family Comets whose orbits are strongly influenced by Jupiter. These objects are thought to have spent most of the last 4.5 billion years orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, in a region known as the Kuiper Belt. Holmes probably was deflected into its present orbit within the last few thousand years and is losing mass as it evaporates in the heat of the Sun. In another few thousand years it is likely either to hit the Sun or a planet, be ejected from the Solar system, or simply die by running out of gas.

David Jewitt.

http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/holmes.html

The Splintering of Comet 17P/Holmes During a Mega-Outburst





The Splintering of Comet 17P/Holmes During a Mega-Outburst - UCLA

Some more images of 17P/Holmes at various stages. Just google it for more awesome pictures

[zorgon]

Comet McNaught - January 12th, 2007

Images from SOHO's coronagraph LASCO C3. The comet appeared in the field of view at around 02:00 UT on 12th January 2007, it passes its perihelion around 19:00 UT on 12th January, and exits C3's field of view at roughly 03:00 UT on 16th January.

Current estimates place the brightness of the comet between mag -2 and mag -3. This means it will be brighter than comet NEAT or comet 96P/Machholz. In other words, this could be the brightest and most spectacular comet that SOHO has ever seen! Since LASCO was built to observe the faint solar corona, its exposure times are not tuned to handle objects as bright as this extraordinary comet. In fact, comet McNaught is so bright that it saturates the CCD camera so that "bleeding" occurs along pixel rows. There is a bright horizontal streak on either side of the comet's head, because the charge leaks easier along the direction in which the CCD image is read out by the associated electronics.

Skywatcher Michael Jäger of Stixendorf, Austria, took this photo of the newfound comet McNaught C/2009 R1 on June 6, 2010, while the comet was visible in the northeastern morning sky. Full Story.
CREDIT: Michael Jäger

New Comet Visible in Early Morning Sky

A recently discovered comet is surprising skywatchers by becoming brighter than predictions had first suggested and can now be seen with the unaided eye during the next few weeks. 

Comet McNaught, officially catalogued as C/2009 R1, was discovered by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught last September using the using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt telescope and a CCD camera. It's the 51st comet that bears McNaught's name.

Although initially an extremely faint object, enough observations of the newfound comet were made to allow Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to calculate an orbit. 

New Comet Visible in Early Morning Sky


Comet McNaught 2006 P1, Chiro Observatory in Western Australia. Comet McNaught was the brightest comet in four decades. Akira Fujii/Davidmalin.com.


Astrophotography

[zorgon]

NASA captures giant comet hitting sun - May 10-11, 2011

SOHO (NASA-ESA Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) watched as a fairly bright comet dove towards the Sun in a white streak and was not seen again after its close encounter (May 10-11, 2011). The comet, probably part of the Kreutz family of comets, was discovered by amateur astronomer Sergey Shurpakov. In this coronagraph the Sun (represented by a white circle) is blocked by the red occulting disk so that the faint structures in the Sun's corona can be discerned. Interestingly, a coronal mass ejection blasted out to the right just as the comet is approaching the Sun. Scientists, however, have yet to find a convincing physical connection between sun-grazing comets and coronal mass ejections. In fact, analysis of this CME using images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows that the CME erupted before the comet came close enough to the solar surface to interact with strong magnetic fields.

[zorgon]

Two Comets hit the Sun - June 2, 1998



Scientists have not yet found a correlation between Comets and CME's but looking at these videos it would seem there are too many to be coincidence

[hoss58]

Zorgon I wanted to just bring this to your att. I thought it should go in the Nasa announcement  thread  but its locked so I should post it here , maybe? not sure!!

http://www.space.com/13403-dwarf-planet-eris-pluto-twin.html