Caterpillar Comet Poses for Pictures En Route to Mars

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Caterpillar Comet Poses for Pictures En Route to Mars

Caterpillar Comet Poses for Pictures En Route to Mars:

Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring passed between the Small Magellanic Cloud (left) and the rich globular cluster NGC 130 on August 29, 2014. Credit: Rolando Ligustri

Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring wriggles between the globular clusters NGC 362 (upper left) and 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) while skirting the edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud on August 29, 2014. Credit: Rolando Ligustri

Now that’s pure gorgeous. As Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring sidles towards its October 19th encounter with Mars, it’s passing a trio of sumptuous deep sky objects near the south celestial pole this week. Astrophotographers weren’t going to let the comet’s picturesque alignments pass without notice. Rolando Ligustri captured this remarkable view using a remote, computer-controlled telescope on August 29th. It shows the rich assemblage of stars and star clusters that comprise the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies located 200,000 light years away.

A photo taken one day earlier on August 28th captures the comet and NGC 362 in a tight pairing. Credit: Damian Peach

A photo taken one day earlier on August 28th captures the comet and NGC 362 in close embrace. Credit: Damian Peach

Looking like a fuzzy caterpillar, Siding Spring seems to crawl between the little globular cluster NGC 362 and the rich swarm called 47 Tucanae, one of the few globulars bright enough to see with the naked eye. C/2013 A1 is currently circumpolar from many locations south of the equator and visible all night long. Glowing at around magnitude +9.5 with a small coma and brighter nucleus, a 6-inch or larger telescope will coax it from a dark sky. Siding Spring dips farthest south on September 2-3 (Dec. -74º) and then zooms northward for Scorpius and Sagittarius. It will encounter additional deep sky objects along the way, most notably the bright open cluster M7 on October 5-6, before passing some 82,000 miles from Mars on October 19th.

Map showing Comet Siding Spring’s recent and upcoming travels near the Small Magellanic Cloud. Positions are shown nightly for Alice Springs, Australia. Source: Chris Marriott’s SkyMap

While the chance of a Mars impact is near zero, the fluffy comet’s fluffy coma and broad tail, both replete with tiny but fast-moving (~125,000 mph) dust particles, might pose a hazard for spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. Assuming either coma or tail grows broad enough to sweep across the Martian atmosphere, impacting dust might create a spectacular meteor shower. Mars Rover cameras may be used to photograph the comet before the flyby and to capture meteors during its closest approach. NASA plans to ‘hide’ its orbiting probes on the opposite side of the planet for a brief time during the approximately 4-hour-long encounter just in case.

Today, Siding Spring’s coma or temporary atmosphere measures about 12,000 miles (19,300 km) wide. While I can’t get my hands on current dust production rates, in late January, when it was farther from the sun than at present, C/2013 A1 kicked out ~800,000 lbs per hour (~100 kg/sec). On October 19th, observers across much of the globe with 6-inch or larger instruments will witness the historic encounter with their own eyes at dusk in the constellation Sagittarius.

Tagged as:
47 Tucanae,
coma,
Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring),
Small Magellanic Cloud

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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

Thursday, September 4, 2014