by iamlucky13 » Thu Oct 06, 2011 7:35 pm
Anybody who wants to offer an opinion on whether CME's can be caused by the sungrazer comets would be strongly advised to read this article first, by an astronomer who actually studies these comets:
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php ... omets_cmes
His opinion (based on actually crunching some statistical data to try to find evidence that comets cause CME's), which I agree with, is that those few sungrazers (out of over 2000 known so far) that seem to disappear with close timing to CME's are easily explained by random chance. As he points out, on average there is a CME every 1-2 hours.
On that note, keep in mind that this video is a time-lapse. I looked up the timestamped images (available by using a date search
here)The comet appears in the field of view at least 20 hours before it disappears behind the coronagraph. We're talking about a long period here, over which I saw 4 major CME's and quite a few smaller ones.
Ginger wrote:What is that blip that keeps moving to the left of the sun? Is it Venus?
Good guess, but it's actually Mercury. With it's short orbital period, it often shows up in LASCO images as it passes either in front of or behind the sun.
Anybody who wants to offer an opinion on whether CME's can be caused by the sungrazer comets would be strongly advised to read this article first, by an astronomer who actually studies these comets:
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=news/comets_cmes
His opinion (based on actually crunching some statistical data to try to find evidence that comets cause CME's), which I agree with, is that those few sungrazers (out of over 2000 known so far) that seem to disappear with close timing to CME's are easily explained by random chance. As he points out, on average there is a CME every 1-2 hours.
On that note, keep in mind that this video is a time-lapse. I looked up the timestamped images (available by using a date search [url=http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query]here[/url])The comet appears in the field of view at least 20 hours before it disappears behind the coronagraph. We're talking about a long period here, over which I saw 4 major CME's and quite a few smaller ones.
[quote="Ginger"]What is that blip that keeps moving to the left of the sun? Is it Venus?[/quote]
Good guess, but it's actually Mercury. With it's short orbital period, it often shows up in LASCO images as it passes either in front of or behind the sun.