ISON discovered PRIOR to September 21, 2012 - Is it the Great Perturber? *updated* | |
Children of the Atom (OP) User ID: 20257839 United States 07/28/2013 07:29 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Seeing comets in the infrared: The dust in the tail reflects sunlight and radiates in the infrared. The infrared emission from comets can be used to get information on the nature of the dust they contain as well as on the rate at which material is being lost from the nucleus. Using IRAS, astronomers discovered that dust from comets fills the Solar System and that comets are dustier than they were thought to be. Many of the meteors which are seen as they streak through our atmosphere may be the larger pieces of this comet dust. IRAS was the first satellite to discover a comet (comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock) Quoting: Source: [link to www.ipac.caltech.edu] |
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Children of the Atom (OP) User ID: 20257839 United States 07/28/2013 07:43 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | How did ISON have such a defined large coma when photographed 5.2 A.U from the sun? Quoting: Anonymous Coward 32031551 I think the nucleus is planet sized. It's tail and coma back when initially discovered was ~ 64,000 km, which is just shy of Jupiter (69,911 km) but bigger than Saturn (58,232 km), Uranus (25,362 km), Neptune (24,622 km), Earth (6,371 km) and Mars (3,390 km). Pretty cool, egh? |
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Children of the Atom (OP) User ID: 20257839 United States 07/28/2013 08:02 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Made a revision to the original post after discovering additional information! Last Edited by Children of the Atom on 07/28/2013 08:02 PM |
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Children of the Atom (OP) User ID: 20257839 United States 07/28/2013 08:15 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Comets aren't supposed to have tails past Jupiter I believe, because there isn't enough solar radiation to cause the comet to change. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 40458469 Using Halley as a reference... Frozen in deep space, Comet Halley is about the size of the Island of Manhattan in New York City. When it gets close the Sun, Halley spews dust and gas that form a glowing head - a coma - and forms a tail that extends for millions of kilometers. The coma can get bigger than Jupiter. Only our Sun is larger. If Halley's Manhattan-sized nucleus were the size of a pinhead, the tail alone would extend for five miles. Quoting: Average Distance from the Sun: 3,300,000 km (22.06 A.U.) Source: [link to solarsystem.nasa.gov] Last Edited by Children of the Atom on 07/28/2013 08:17 PM |
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Children of the Atom (OP) User ID: 20257839 United States 07/29/2013 12:58 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | I am sure others would clearly argue it is a regular old comet, me personally - I cannot say one way or the other. It has been interesting and educating sifting through the data and publishing. What I can say is that comets are unknown unknowns. My biggest question though is that asteroids are made of left over planet material / ice and rock/dust but why do asteroids behave differently than comets? Interesting post OP! I gave it 5 stars w/o even reading it all yet LOL Quoting: Anonymous Coward 36648852 There is a bunch to look at here… I better get busy Should take >30m though. |
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Children of the Atom (OP) User ID: 20257839 United States 07/29/2013 01:13 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | I'm not trying to hype this up but these are just questions that come up while researching the available information. There are some odd possibilities with it and we have had a lot of comets whizzing by lately too! The reappearance of it around the end of November is another odd bit as well. If at the very least I hope it continues to provoke thoughts in others as it has in me! |
T-Cain Top Hat User ID: 44058145 United States 07/29/2013 01:14 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Isn't Ison an anagram for Sion or Zion, as in..the return of Mt. Zion? Last Edited by USCG Popeye on 07/29/2013 01:14 AM |
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Anonymous Coward User ID: 12086234 United States 07/29/2013 01:51 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Mt Zion is God's Holy mountain in Israel. [link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)] Psalm 132:13 For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: Joel 3:17 “So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain. [link to www.openbible.info] |
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Anonymous Coward User ID: 41343187 United States 07/29/2013 02:24 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Much of the speculation about ISON and its likely consequence has been sadly misinformed -- indeed, complacent. Let me reiterate some basic facts here. Fact: ISON is *not* a comet. The astronomers think that ISON might once have been a moon of Neptune or Uranus, or perhaps it was locked in a stable point in Neptune's orbit, and was then perturbed somehow. But perturbed it was, and now it is on a thirty-six-hundred-year collision course with Earth. Fact: ISON's impact will *not* be comparable to the Chicxulub impact which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. That impact was sufficient to cause mass death, and to alter -- drastically, and for all time -- the course of evolution of life on Earth. But it was caused by an impactor some ten kilometers across. ISON is *forty* times as large, and its mass is therefore some *sixty thousand times* as great. Fact: ISON will *not* simply cause a mass extinction event, like Chicxulub. It will be much worse than that. The heat pulse will sterilize the land to a depth of fifty meters. Life might survive, but only by being buried deep in caves. We know no way, even in principle, by which a human community could ride out the impact. When ISON arrives, everybody will die. Fact: ISON *cannot* be deflected with current technology. It is possible we could turn aside small bodies -- a few kilometers across, typical of the population of near-Earth asteroids -- with such means as emplaced nuclear charges or thermonuclear rockets. The challenge of deflecting ISON is many orders of magnitude greater. Thought experiments on moving such bodes have been proposed, for example, using a series of gravitational assists -- not available in this case -- or using advanced technology such as nanotech von Neumann machines to dismantle and disperse the body. But such technologies are far beyond our current capabilities. |
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Anonymous Coward User ID: 44225630 United States 07/29/2013 02:38 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Much of the speculation about ISON and its likely consequence has been sadly misinformed -- indeed, complacent. Let me reiterate some basic facts here. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 41343187 Fact: ISON is *not* a comet. The astronomers think that ISON might once have been a moon of Neptune or Uranus, or perhaps it was locked in a stable point in Neptune's orbit, and was then perturbed somehow. But perturbed it was, and now it is on a thirty-six-hundred-year collision course with Earth. Fact: ISON's impact will *not* be comparable to the Chicxulub impact which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. That impact was sufficient to cause mass death, and to alter -- drastically, and for all time -- the course of evolution of life on Earth. But it was caused by an impactor some ten kilometers across. ISON is *forty* times as large, and its mass is therefore some *sixty thousand times* as great. Fact: ISON will *not* simply cause a mass extinction event, like Chicxulub. It will be much worse than that. The heat pulse will sterilize the land to a depth of fifty meters. Life might survive, but only by being buried deep in caves. We know no way, even in principle, by which a human community could ride out the impact. When ISON arrives, everybody will die. Fact: ISON *cannot* be deflected with current technology. It is possible we could turn aside small bodies -- a few kilometers across, typical of the population of near-Earth asteroids -- with such means as emplaced nuclear charges or thermonuclear rockets. The challenge of deflecting ISON is many orders of magnitude greater. Thought experiments on moving such bodes have been proposed, for example, using a series of gravitational assists -- not available in this case -- or using advanced technology such as nanotech von Neumann machines to dismantle and disperse the body. But such technologies are far beyond our current capabilities. That's a high-potency dose of doom. |