Jumat, 24 Juni 2011

New Found Comet; May Be Visible From Earth In 2013


It is found comet approaches the sun, and when you get here in 2013, you may be able to see with the naked eye.

Astronomers came across the icy intruder June 5 during the search for potentially hazardous asteroids.

Equipped with the most camera-1, 400 million pixels, the University of Hawaii Pan-STARRS team hung a small picture of the strange object while he was over 700 million miles (1.1 billion km), between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. (Explore an interactive solar energy.)

"Almost everything we find is an asteroid, but this object was suspect," said Richard Wainscoat, co-discoverer of the comet and an astronomer at the University of Hawaii.

"Unlike asteroids, which appear as points in the images, was the telltale sign that it has distributed to its appearance blurred."

In March 2013, the comet, named C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) are expected within 30 million miles (48,000,000 kilometers) closer to the sun that even the innermost planet, Mercury.

When the comet makes its closest to the sun, more of its ice evaporates, which increases its envelope foggy gas and dust, producing the familiar tail.

This denser envelope, or coma, should increase the peak brightness of the comet, so it can be seen with the naked eye low in the west just after sunset.

Runaway South comet

Although there is no danger of collision with Earth, the preliminary calculations of the orbit of the comet indicates that this could be the first and last trip through the solar system.

"That could be coming around the sun first, and only to be expelled from the solar system, never to return," said Wainscoat.

"Why do not we have a lot of information, do not really know the track pretty well right now, and it takes up to two months to determine the outcome."

Astronomers believe that C/2011 L4 can be a fugitive from the Oort Cloud, a reservoir of billions of comets that orbit in hibernation about 100,000 times more than the distance between Earth and sun.

"The current path of the comet is typical of those suspected of being derived from the Oort Cloud, said he comes from the south the land rises in the back of the sun and in the northern sky, just nearly perpendicular to the planet in the solar system "Wainscoat said.

That's going around the back of the sun from our point of view may ultimately affect the visibility of the comet, but much depends on the proximity of the body is actually the sun.

Even if a comet is north or south of the sun, when it reaches peak brightness of which hemisphere of the earth can have a better picture.

For now, "we think it will be a target of binoculars easy, but it may well do so to open the eyes level and there is even a potential that can be visible during the day," said Wainscoat.

"But it's just really too early to tell. We can not know for sure until a couple of weeks before it arrives."

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