Surprise Guest Appearance
(Click image to enlarge)Comet Holmes
Comets are balls of ice, dust and rock that orbit the Sun. Most have their origin in the extremely cold Oort cloud that surrounds our Solar System. The Nucleus or core is usually less than 50 kilometers in diameter. As they near the sun in their orbit, their core heats and the ice begins to sublimate and outgassing occurs, releasing dust and gas that forms a huge Coma. This Coma can be as large as the sun. A tail of gas usually extends behind, sometimes millions of miles in length.
Comet 17/P Holmes is the subject of this image and was first discovered by Edwin Holmes in 1892. Within the last 2 weeks, it has put on quite a show, brightening from magnitude 17 to magnitude 2.8. Almost a million times brighter in just a few days! Astronomers are not sure of the reason for this sudden change. It is actually moving away from the sun right now in its orbit, and is almost 2 AU’s away. (180,000,000 miles)
Holmes does not have much of a tail and appears as a large sphere. The size of the nucleus is about 3.4 kilometers. However in the last week, the coma has expanded to a diameter of 700,000 kilometers. This is about 70% of the diameter of the Sun. It will be interesting to see if Comet Holmes has any other surprises for us in the next few weeks.
Comets are balls of ice, dust and rock that orbit the Sun. Most have their origin in the extremely cold Oort cloud that surrounds our Solar System. The Nucleus or core is usually less than 50 kilometers in diameter. As they near the sun in their orbit, their core heats and the ice begins to sublimate and outgassing occurs, releasing dust and gas that forms a huge Coma. This Coma can be as large as the sun. A tail of gas usually extends behind, sometimes millions of miles in length.
Comet 17/P Holmes is the subject of this image and was first discovered by Edwin Holmes in 1892. Within the last 2 weeks, it has put on quite a show, brightening from magnitude 17 to magnitude 2.8. Almost a million times brighter in just a few days! Astronomers are not sure of the reason for this sudden change. It is actually moving away from the sun right now in its orbit, and is almost 2 AU’s away. (180,000,000 miles)
Holmes does not have much of a tail and appears as a large sphere. The size of the nucleus is about 3.4 kilometers. However in the last week, the coma has expanded to a diameter of 700,000 kilometers. This is about 70% of the diameter of the Sun. It will be interesting to see if Comet Holmes has any other surprises for us in the next few weeks.
Aquisition Details:
Location- Starlodge Observatory
Date- November 6, 2007
Telescope- FSQ 106
Camera- STL 11000
RGB- (3) 1 minute subframes taken for each color
posted by Pictoris ab Lumen at 2:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home