I'm gnashing my teeth. I was supposed to be teaching Astronomy for Beginners starting next Tuesday evening, but it got cancelled because there were weren't enough takers. I'll be teaching Excel instead.

It would have been so cool to tell my students, "For this course we've laid on a naked-eye comet..."

Oh what the hey, I'll mention the comet anyway.

Bummer. My condolences! Excel may be necessary in today's world but how can it stack up to Astronomy?

Thanks, it was taken with a Meade LPI imager and 10" LX200GPS, not the best imager out there, but it came with my scope. I set up with a tree to my right to block out the moon as much as possible, but I was still in a hell of a lot of light.

Maybe on Sunday I can get it out into the real darkness and see what I can grab, its an interesting comet, and so yellow!

Hey, tdvance, my thoughts exactly. If man can do it, man will do it. And if man can make money with it, man will do it on the double.

Personally, my fave idea (as it is, to my best knowledge, originally mine) is to shoot a buckshot load, say a few tons, of metallic pebbles into an orbit that counterrotates with that of Earth (means you have to reach 58 km/s, which poses a slight problem). Then, half a year later, on the other side of the Sun, the buckshot will enter Earth's atmopshere at maximum velocity, creating a predictable shower of brilliant fireballs. If you choose the right metals and create multilayered balls, you get multicolor effects like in fireworks when they burn up in the atmosphere.

This 4th of July display brought to you by...

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David Alexander Kann
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Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg

<span style='color:blue'>Ignite our minds and let's burn brighter
These are the wonders at your feet</span>
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>- Dark Tranquillity, The Wonders At Your Feet</span>

A quick glance at the sky with my 16x70 binos showed up this little beauty despite a full moon nearby. First thing I looked at too. This one is going to be interesting to watch over the next few weeks.

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I saw that it was closest to Jupiter in 1970ish...Next will be after 2020.

Wonder if it took Earth 30 years for it too have a Jello-Like-Quake from the Jupiter encounter...after all 30 years is an astronomically small measure of time...and it's orbit does coincide with Jupiter several times in it's History.

(and don't tell me, "That's the Shakiest Theory I've have ever heard ") :P

New update: It will be closest to Earth next time around ...2012...http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=17p&orb=1

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Astronomy is looking up... :)

Good article about the history of Comet Holmes at http://cometography.com/pcomets/017p.html

Seems as if this comet is prone to outbursts. Since it just passed perihelion it may have been due for a super outburst. Are there any plans to spin HST around and take a look?

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Naw, the shakiest theory is that somewhere on that "comet", there's an XO metaphorically on his knees before his Captain, saying "Yes, sir, but they never noticed us doing orbital correction burns before..."



This is an odd one, tho. I was just out about fifteen minutes ago looking at it, and it's distinctly green from here (it's been variously reported as green, yellow-green or yellowish). Really easy to spot, despite the full moon nearby (to anyone familiar with Perseus it stands out of course) and very distinctly green to the naked eye from my semi-dark location. Some high altitude haze tonite but it's not having any effects on the nearby stars that I can tell.

That's with the naked eye, even. (Green? and Bright? Weird. ) Thru the 10x50s it's even more green and more impressive, with hints of internal structure.

The color bothers me. Not because it appears to be that color, but because of the the brightness. Anyone have any links to a spectral analysis yet? In nearly thirty years of being an astronomy nut I've never heard of anything like this. It's an odd duck, indeed.

Also, does anyone know how stable it's orbit is? It's also fairly uncommon to find a comet this close to the sun with a stable orbit producing outbursts like this, if I remember correctly.

Cheers all, and Hi

Andy

Hey, kucharek! What R.A.F. said! Good to see your veggies are still green.

About the comet, it might have been worse. It could have been discovered by Mr. Geoffrey Nancy of Liverpool.

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Well, what you need to do is have them study the etymology of the word "excel". Then gradually shift into Leg Language for a while until everyone has the basics, then shout "Hyeat! Are be an astronomiapeaical phenom be wait fer usens out of the doors++."

Then escort the whole crew to your scope and curse the clouds.

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After wimping out yesterday, I dragged my 10" out tonight. Even in the light polluted skies of the Bay Area it did not disappoint. There were three distinct layers, 1) a star-like center core which was off center in a 2) bright diffuse core, and a 3) circular outer halo. Did it have this much structure last night? The pictures I saw from yesterday didn't show it, but some of the pictures from today don't either. I left the truss tube assembly on my scope together so I can easily track it over the next few nights.

There has been a lot of speculation that the flare up was due to a collision with an asteroid. This seems plausible to me, but the link someone posted earlier shows the comet to lie well outside of the solar system plane. Does the asteroid belt extend this far out of the plane?

Many main belt asteroids are in steeply inclined orbits. For example, 2 Pallas is inclined upwards of 30^o.

Woundn't you know. Here in our nation's capital we have been clouded out the whole time. The good news is a soaking rain after a long drought.

Now why didn't I think of that in the first place?

I'll try to get some pictures tonite, I'm still trying to figure out exposure time and gain and all that.

Visually it is more solid looking than the pictures. The pictures pick up a bit of the haze around it.

Thanks. I wonder what the distribution of inclinations is?

Here's a snapshot I took from my moonlit backyard on Thursday night with a Canon Powershot S30, 15 sec, f2.8, 7 mm focal length (ISO equivalent 200).

Attached Images

20071025_CometHolmes.jpg (108.0 KB, 24 views)

Nice shot! Thanks for posting and welcome to the board.

Two words: Jupiter Effect

John Gribbin has said he wishes he'd never had anything to do with it

Well, after waiting a couple of days for the full Moon to (somewhat) get out out of the way, I went out tonight and looked. Wow! Even with my trashed out 7x50s, it was very yellow and definitely non stellar! I was trying to focus on it and when I shifted to Delta Persei, I found that they were in focus!

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