Astrophotographer Captures Dramatic Photo of Comet Siding Spring Approaching Mars

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Astrophotographer Captures Dramatic Photo of Comet Siding Spring Approaching Mars

Astrophotographer Captures Dramatic Photo of Comet Siding Spring Approaching Mars:

Comet Siding Spring approaches within a degree of Mars at 5:07 a.m. CDT today October 19. Closest approach happens around 1:28 p.m. CDT (18:28 UT) when the comet will brush about 83,240 miles from the planet’s surface. Image copyright SEN / Damian Peach

Astrophotographer Damian Peach shares this spectacular image of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring approaching Mars taken just hours ago. The faint comet shows a small, condensed coma and bent tail against the glaring orange glow of the brilliant planet. Most photos of comets passing by a planet or deep sky object are lucky line-of-sight pairings with the comet in the foreground and object light years away in the background. Not this one. Both Siding Spring and Mars lie at nearly the identical distance from Earth of 151 million miles (243 million km).

Artist view of the comet passing closest to Mars this Sunday. At the time, the Mars orbiters from the U.S., Europe and India will be huddled on the opposite side of the planet to avoid possible impacts from comet dust. Credit: NASA

Artist view of the comet passing closest to Mars this afternoon October 19. At the time, the Mars orbiters from the U.S., Europe and India will be huddled on the opposite side of the planet to avoid possible impacts from comet dust. Credit: NASA

When closest to Mars this afternoon, Siding Spring is expected to shine at around magnitude -5 or about twice as bright as Venus. Mind you, that estimate considers the entire comet crunched down into a dot. But for those who remember, Comet Hale-Bopp remained at zero magnitude, 100 times fainter than Siding Spring, and made for one of the most impressive naked eye sights on spring evenings in 1997.

More recently, Comet McNaught climaxed at magnitude -5 in the daytime sky near the Sun in January 2007. It was plainly visible in binoculars and telescopes in a blue sky if you knew exactly where to look and took care to avoid the Sun. Would-be Martians are far more fortunate, with Siding Spring appearing high overhead in a dark sky from some locations, including that of NASA’s Curiosity Rover.

Comet C/2013 Siding Spring as it rises and sets over the Curiosity Rover this weekend October 18-19. Credit: Solarsystemscope.com

Right on time for today’s encounter, the folks at Solarsystemscope.com have rolled out an interactive simulation of Comet Siding Spring’s appearance in the sky above Curiosity. Just click the play button on the control panel above to run it live. Seen from Mars, the comet bobs along Eridanus the River southwest of Orion, passing high in the southern sky overnight. What a sight!

Another photo, just in, taken of the comet and Mars today by Rolando Ligustri. Beautiful!

The comet nucleus is only about 0.4 miles (700 meters) across, but the coma or atmosphere fluffs out to around 12,000 miles (19,300 km). Seen from the ground, Siding Spring would span about 8°of sky or 16 full Moons from head to tail. Moving at 1.5° per minute, we could watch crawl across the heavens in real time with the naked eye. Wish I zoom to Mars for a look, but the rovers and orbiters will be our eyes as they study and photograph the comet during its brief flyby. As soon as those pictures become available, we’ll publish them here. Can’t wait!

Come Siding Spring comes out the other side!

While we’re waiting, amateur astronomers have been busy shooting additional photos and creating videos from their images. Fritz Helmut Hemmerich made this video from 1200-meters at Tenerife in the Canary Islands showing Comet Siding Spring immediately after its Mars encounter. One thing we know for certain is that the comet is intact after its close brush.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Sunday, October 19, 2014