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APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 4:07 am
by APOD Robot
Image Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing Tails

Explanation: Why does Comet Pons-Brooks now have tails pointing in opposite directions? The most spectacular tail is the blue-glowing ion tail that is visible flowing down the image. The ion tail is pushed directly out from the Sun by the solar wind. On the upper right is the glowing central coma of Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks. Fanning out from the coma, mostly to the left, is the comet's dust tail. Pushed out and slowed down by the pressure of sunlight, the dust tail tends to trail the comet along its orbit and, from some viewing angles, can appear opposite to the ion tail. The distant, bright star Alpha Leporis is seen at the bottom of the featured image captured last week from Namibia. Two days ago, the comet passed its closest to the Earth and is now best visible from southern skies as it dims and glides back to the outer Solar System.

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Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 5:12 pm
by Lee
I love this picture! It looks like something tore the night sky and is letting light in.

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 6:01 pm
by Ann
Lee wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 5:12 pm I love this picture! It looks like something tore the night sky and is letting light in.
I like it too! :D

Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing Tails Image Credit & Copyright: Rolando Ligustri & Lukas Demetz


Another beautiful picture of seemingly two-tailed Pons-Brooks was recently posted in the Recent Submissions thread (for May) by macnenia, where the comet seemed to have caught small cluster NGC 2017 (actually an asterism) in its fishing net ion tail:


macnenia wrote about his picture:

The anti-tail, apparently pointing towards the Sun, is an optical illusion. The comet sloughs off particles with a wide range of sizes. The really fine stuff is blown around by the solar wind, but the heavier material is largely unaffected and so stays close to where it was ejected by the comet, but maintaining the velocity of that ejection. Therefore it doesn't follow the comet along, especially as the comet, being pulled strongly by the Sun's gravity, maintains a curved (elliptical) trajectory. And so, behind where the comet has been, there is a curved line of coarse particles, holding to the comet's previous position, or perhaps having drifted but not too far. As the Earth passes through the plane of the comet's path, this thicker swathe of particles, changes from a diffuse curve, not so easily seen, to a thick line, where the areas of greater density are aligned behind each other.....thus we see a bright thicker line, surrounded by the diffuse and much more spread out smaller particles.

Not sure I got all that, but I mostly got it! :D

Some comets are more spectacular than others. Perhaps the most amazing comet seen in the 21st century is Comet McNaught. I never saw it, either because it was only visible from southerns skies, or else because my Swedish skies were relentlessly overcast, as they usually are in January. But what a gem of a comet that was!!!

Comet McNaught. Credit: S. Deiries/ESO



I just want to add a few words about the bright star, alpha Leporis, that is visible in the lower part of today's APOD. This star is too bright for Gaia and too distant for Hipparcos, humanity's two greatest instruments for measuring parallaxes and thus distances. The star is however classified as a supergiant, albeit a lesser supergiant of luminosity type Ib, and since its spectral class is F0, it will emit much and possibly most of its light at visible wavelengths. If we are to believe Hipparcos' very iffy parallax, the distance to this star may be more than 2000 light-years, and its radius may very well be large enough to swallow Venus! Wowzers!

Wikipedia claims that alpha Leporis is a yellow-white star. Don't you believe it. Our color vision has evolved to see sunlight (and most definitely daylight) as neutral or white, and because alpha Leporis is some 1000-2000 degrees hotter than the Sun, we will, under the right conditions at least, see this star as bluish.

Just the way it looks in the APOD, in other words! :D

Ann

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 6:54 pm
by johnnydeep
The best part of this APOD is the link to a crow having fun repeatedly sliding down a snowy roof. If that doesn't prove animals are conscious and sentient (are those even different things?), nothing does!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 7:20 pm
by Ann
johnnydeep wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 6:54 pm The best part of this APOD is the link to a crow having fun repeatedly sliding down a snowy roof. If that doesn't prove animals are conscious and sentient (are those even different things?), nothing does!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Amazing!!! The crow is even using a plastic lid as a sled!!! Crows are so smart!

I'm reminded of a picture of birds (hardly crows, what are they?) that are "jumping with joy"!!

Jump with joy birds.png
A still from a video, Crappy Wildlife Photos That Are So Bad They’re Good
| Good Times #1

Humanity is sometimes called Homo ludens, the "playful" humans. Well, maybe crows should be called Corvus ludens?

Ann

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 8:15 pm
by johnnydeep
Ann wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 7:20 pm
johnnydeep wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2024 6:54 pm The best part of this APOD is the link to a crow having fun repeatedly sliding down a snowy roof. If that doesn't prove animals are conscious and sentient (are those even different things?), nothing does!
...

Amazing!!! The crow is even using a plastic lid as a sled!!! Crows are so smart!

I'm reminded of a picture of birds (hardly crows, what are they?) that are "jumping with joy"!!
...

Humanity is sometimes called Homo ludens, the "playful" humans. Well, maybe crows should be called Corvus ludens?

Ann
Sounds good to me. There's a book discussing the importance of play for all animals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens
Homo Ludens is a book originally published in Dutch in 1938[2] by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga.[3] It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society.[4] Huizinga suggests that play is primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture. The Latin word ludens is the present active participle of the verb ludere, which itself is cognate with the noun ludus. Ludus has no direct equivalent in English, as it simultaneously refers to sport, play, school, and practice.[5]
...
Huizinga begins by making it clear that animals played before humans. One of the most significant (human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun.[7]

Huizinga identifies 5 characteristics that play must have:[8]

° Play is free, is in fact freedom.
° Play is not "ordinary" or "real" life.
° Play is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration.
° Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
° Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.[9]

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2024 3:34 am
by Sa Ji Tario
It looks spectacular but, what could this have been like? https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Cometa_de_1744

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2024 4:55 am
by Ann
Sa Ji Tario wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2024 3:34 am It looks spectacular but, what could this have been like? https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Cometa_de_1744

Fantastic! The Great Comet of 1744 looked like this:

Great Comet of 1744. Woodcut by Chéseaux(?)


Imagine the dark skies of 1744! Look at the Milky Way above the comet's amazing tails. If I am not mistaken, the brightest star at upper right is Altair in Aquila. (All things considered though... I'm glad I didn't have to live my life in the 18th century.)

How did the Great Comet of 1744 acquire that amazing set of tails? According to Wikipedia, it may have been due to processes similar to those that led to the spectacular tails of Comet McNaught:

The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught. Image Credit & Copyright: Robert H. McNaught

Wikipedia wrote about the Great Comet of 1744:

The tail structure was a puzzle to astronomers for many years. Although other comets had displayed multiple tails on occasion, the 1744 comet was unique in having six. It has been suggested that the 'fan' of tails was generated by as many as three active sources on the cometary nucleus, exposed in turn to solar radiation as the nucleus rotated. It also has been proposed that the tail phenomenon was a very prominent example of the "dust striae" seen in the tails of some comets, such as Comet West and C/2006 P1 (McNaught).


The Formation of Striae within Cometary Dust Tails by a Sublimation-Driven YORP-like Effect by Jordan K. Steckloff and Seth A. Jacobson

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Ill ... _281895985
Sublimating gas molecules scatter off of the surface of an icy body in the
same manner as photons (Lambertian Scattering). This means that for every
photon-driven body force, there should be a sublimation-driven analogue
that affects icy bodies. Thermal photons emitted from the surfaces of
asymmetrically shaped bodies in the Solar System generate net torques that
change the spin rates of these bodies over time. The long-term averaging of
this torque is called the YORP effect. Here we propose a sublimation-driven
analogue to the YORP effect (Sublimation-YORP or SYORP), in which
sublimating gas molecules emitted from the surfaces of icy bodies in the
Solar System also generate net torques on the bodies...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take you at your word. :wink:

Ann

Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks Develops Opposing... (2024 Jun 04)

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2024 6:52 pm
by johnnydeep
Ann wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2024 4:55 am
Sa Ji Tario wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2024 3:34 am It looks spectacular but, what could this have been like? https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Cometa_de_1744

Fantastic! The Great Comet of 1744 looked like this:


Imagine the dark skies of 1744! Look at the Milky Way above the comet's amazing tails. If I am not mistaken, the brightest star at upper right is Altair in Aquila. (All things considered though... I'm glad I didn't have to live my life in the 18th century.)

How did the Great Comet of 1744 acquire that amazing set of tails? According to Wikipedia, it may have been due to processes similar to those that led to the spectacular tails of Comet McNaught:

Wikipedia wrote about the Great Comet of 1744:

The tail structure was a puzzle to astronomers for many years. Although other comets had displayed multiple tails on occasion, the 1744 comet was unique in having six. It has been suggested that the 'fan' of tails was generated by as many as three active sources on the cometary nucleus, exposed in turn to solar radiation as the nucleus rotated. It also has been proposed that the tail phenomenon was a very prominent example of the "dust striae" seen in the tails of some comets, such as Comet West and C/2006 P1 (McNaught).


The Formation of Striae within Cometary Dust Tails by a Sublimation-Driven YORP-like Effect by Jordan K. Steckloff and Seth A. Jacobson

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Ill ... _281895985
Sublimating gas molecules scatter off of the surface of an icy body in the
same manner as photons (Lambertian Scattering). This means that for every
photon-driven body force, there should be a sublimation-driven analogue
that affects icy bodies. Thermal photons emitted from the surfaces of
asymmetrically shaped bodies in the Solar System generate net torques that
change the spin rates of these bodies over time. The long-term averaging of
this torque is called the YORP effect. Here we propose a sublimation-driven
analogue to the YORP effect (Sublimation-YORP or SYORP), in which
sublimating gas molecules emitted from the surfaces of icy bodies in the
Solar System also generate net torques on the bodies...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take you at your word. :wink:

Ann
Hey, I think I almost understand that!