green comet 2023 If you look at the right part of the sky you have a chance to see something that won’t happen again in our life times that green Comet we’ve been talking about it’s now visible until the end of the month but it’s something more than a once in a life time event you could green comet think of it as once in a human kind happening the last time this green Comet passed Earth was a thousand years ago so that’s the time of Neanderthals and woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers it is a Celestial event.
One he’s in Victoria up super early because this is a special occasion Heather I was actually looking for the comment walking this is the best time to see it just before Dawn and did you spot it nah tasty here.
Unfortunately so I haven’t spotted it yet okay green comet well there’s such Intrigue around this comment why is it so interesting well what’s interesting about this one is that it has come from very very fara way a region called the Oort cloud which is a cloud of icy objects that completely surrounds our solar system it’s way out beyond the planets it’s past Neptune and this this cloud is made of left over ices and and rock and dust and dirt from the original cloud.
That our whole solar system was made because we came from this giant cloud of gas and dust you know those colorful pictures we see from the Hubble telescope and now green comet the web telescope of those clouds in space yes we used to look like that and these clouds they condense down and a lot of the material goes into.
But there’s stuff left over and that’s what’s left out there these are left overs they’re left overs it’s sort of like if you’re making a pie you know when you get your dough green comet or your flour and all that stuff you make your nice ball of dough on the table and then there’s all the stuff left around the edges that you don’t use that’s what this is so it’s very great walled it’s very old material it’s primitive.
So it’s been a long time so that’s a huge awesome huge it’ll be 50 000 years back so that’s partly why it’s special but this one’s also interesting because it’s green now why is that well green comet that turns out to to be one of the ingredients on the comment there’s carbon there and there’s a it’s called the dark it’s two molecules of carbon that are together and when ultraviolet light from the Sun hits it they split apart and give off green light and this is how we.
That’s coming off it because comets are made mostly of ice and as they get closer to the Sun that ice turns into a gas and the dustis released and it informs this long tail and with our telescopes and spectroscopes we can look at what that stuff’s made of and again we’re seeing the ingredients so carbon that’s kind.
There so it’s it’s looking back in time it’s a time capsule from very far green comet away and that’s why they’re so interesting so that’s what we learn about comets we talk about that but the fact about this 50 000 I’ll get to how people can see this for themselves but it’s just so interesting to just even con template 50000 years ago the last time it swung by what was it like here Bob well.
It was during the Ice Age it was the ice age and there were two species of humans on Earth and it’s hard for us to get around that because now you know there’s only one green comet kind of human green comet the homosapiens that’s us that’s you and me but there were neanderthals as well they were just coming to the end of their existence the population by that time was pretty small most of them were living in southern Europe around Gibraltar.
The closest point which is still 41 million kilometers away which is astounding tome but right now it’s at its closest point but it is still going to be visible for the fore seeable future green comet how do people see it 40 million kilos that’s nothing in astronomical terms the sun’s 150 million kilometers away so it’s really close it’s quite close so what you do you go outside and look North first of all you need a really dark sky you can’t see it from a city.
find a big dipper I think most people can find the Big Dipper I’ve green comet tried to draw it for you here I don’t know if you can see it but it’ll be sort of on its Edge on like that and you use then-star so the Big Dipper to find the North Star or north star and then.
smudge it’s going to be really subtle it’s not obvious it’s very subtle there’s a very good chance you could miss it because it’s so dim it’s not a brew if you were thinking like green comet some Blazing Green streak it’s not like that at all is it not at like comments.
We’ve had in the past we had one called Neil wise that came through in 2020 and you could look just look right at it and see it but this one is really dim but so if you have green comet binoculars that’s better and slowly just scan that area sky and and if you see it it’ll catch it and you just see a green smudge it’s not clear because.
There’s a cloud of stuff around it that’s what you’re looking at is all the stuff coming off so you don’t actually see the comet itself otherwise go to websites there are a lot of green comet telescopes that are looking at this right now and there are like is a good place to go and they have webcams they have chats about it and you can see it that way and get a good image as well you know a York University had a live stream and we’ve been showing some pictures from a Nova Scotia photographer.
Who’s been up taking some shots as well we’ve been looking green comet at some of those from mouth can you just hold up that picture again because I just think that’s extraordinary here weare in the area in the era of tachonology.
YOU CAN SEE 2023 COMET WITH HUMAN EYE.
Right now, a comet from the outer edges of our solar system is passing close to Earth for the first time in 50,000 years. Here’s how to see it. And around that time, if you are some where with a dark sky, it may be visible to the naked eye. Or better yet, use binoculars.
To find the comet look in the northern sky soon after sunset. The Green Comet. Watch for it.
50,000 YEARS BEFORE COMET PASSING NEAR OUR EARTH PLANET.
Every now and then something happens in the sky that gives us pause and this is one of them this green comment is expected to be the most visible to stargazers this week as it passes Earth for the first time in about 50 000 years last time the comet was this close neanderthals still inhabited Eurasia our species was expanding its reach Beyond Africa Ice Age.
Mammals like mammoths and saber-toothed cats roam the land and Northern Africa was a wet fertile and rainy Place comets are made up of asolid core of rock ice and dust a thing assy atmosphere of more ice and dust called a coma surrounds it astronomer sat caltech’s Palomar observatory in San Diego found the green comet in March 2022 using.
The zwiki transient facility telescope its green Hue reflects the comet’s chemical composition it’s the result of a clash between sunlight and carbon-based molecules in the Comets coma and NASA researchers are taking this pit stop as a chance to gather everything they can about the comment we’re going to be looking for the the Fingerprints of given molecules.
That we can’t access from the ground so things that are in our own Earth’s atmosphere like water carbondioxide carbon monoxide methane we’re going to be looking for those fingerprints in this comment and be able to study things that we haven’t been able to see.
If you have a pair of good binoculars handy you’ll be able to see it during a clear night in the northern sky find a remote location to avoid light pollution is key the comet will stay visible through early February but scientists say the next best times to see it are between February 9th and 13th for Inside.
green comet 2023 This Will NOT Hit Earth
Comets are some of the most fascinating objects in our solar system these icy bodies are made up of rock and dust and are believed to have formed in the outer reaches of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune as they approach the sun they develop a bright coma or fuzzy atmosphere and a long tail that points away from the Sun.
A recently discovered Comet named C 2022 E3 ztf is set to make a close approach to the Earth for the first time in 50 000 years whenever a new comet is discovered it is natural for people to wonder about the potential dangers it could pose to human life on Earth where does this comic come from are there any potential hazards associated with it such as collision with.
Earth or interference with satellite and space missions comets are notoriously unpredictable but there’s no threat of this green comet crashing into Earth as it will be 26 million miles away from us at its closest approachif it continues its current Trend in brightness it could become visible to the unaided eye under Dark Skies so.
What do we know about this Comet we discover hundreds of comets a year and in some cases depending on which telescopes are tasked to it in some cases it could even be thousands this comet was discovered last year so the act of discovering a comet is not itself extraordinary most of those comets never get bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye.
green comet 2023 complete information
They’re moving too you have to know where to look today versus yesterday which is going to be different from where you have to look tomorrow so this one in particular based on its trajectory based on how bright it has been for the past few months because it’s headed doing this deep Loop orbit around the Sun as it descends towards the Sun as you know as you may know the heat from the sun will subliminate the ice we all know sublimation.
That’s what dry ice does so why is it green well we can spectroscopically analyze the comet put the light through a prism through a version of a prism and you see all the chemistry that’s going on and we know there are a couple of ways you can get green one of them is from the molecule Cyanogen and the Cyanogen is poisonous.
The first time we detected Cyanogen in a comet was for Halley’s Comet in 1910 so you have a comet that’s coming in it was unknown before so last year was it was discovered so there’s no record of it ever having come before when you look at its orbit we find out that its orbit is 50 000 Years Around the Sun so Sun’s gravity goes well beyond the last planet from the sun well beyond Neptune.
It goes into the Kuiper belt comets and where Pluto is a member one of the prominent members of the Kuiper belt of comets and and then beyond that there’s a spherical repository of Frozen objects comets that goes practically halfway out to the nearest star this green Comet is currently reflecting sunlight at around magnitude 7.
While it will be visible it won’t be the bright green Comet that some stories have promised a viewer should be prepared to be patient and have a bit of luck to spot it it’s too faint to see with the naked eye the comet is considered a long period Comet which means its orbit extends very far out of our solar system from a place we have not actually ever observed the Oort cloud has only ever been theoretically predicted due to the existence of comets.
Like this one this was predicted to be there by a Dutch astronomer named Jan Oort and it’s called the Oort Cloud this Comet comes to us from the Oort cloud and it has already come past the Sun so it’s already at its own intrinsic brightest but now it’s going to work its way back out of the solar system and it’ll come closer towards Earth so after it dips around the Sun it’ll be best viewed in our Northern Skies as passes by the North Star.
When light leaves the sun it takes a little over eight minutes to reach Earth but it will be another 8 to 28 days before the same sunlight reaches the inner edge of the Oort cloud and perhaps as much as a year and a half before the sunlight passes around the Oort Cloud’s outer edge there may be hundreds of billions even trillions of icy bodies.
The orbit of one of these icy worlds and it begins a long fall towards our sun most known long period comets have been seen only once in recorded history because their orbital periods are so…Well long countless more known long period comets have never been seen by human eyes some have orbits so long that the last time they pass through the inner solar system.
Our species did not yet exist last time this green Comet was visible from Earth was approximately 50,000 years ago and it is predicted that it will not be seen again in the inner solar system for at least a million years but it could also leave the solar system completely there are also comets out there that never have ventured close to the Sun in the billions of years since.
They formed but there is another type of comets out there that include much smaller orbits than long period comets these periodic comets are comets with an orbital period of less than 200 years perhaps the most famous short period comet is Halley’s Comet it is named after the astronomer mathematician and physicist Edmund Halley the comet which is visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years was observed by Halle in 1682 and it correctly predicted its return in 1758 by studying comets scientists.
Hope to learn how planets formed and even how life may have evolved on Earthso we know much less about the Comets than we know about the giant planets and we know much less about the giant planets that we know about the terrestrial planets so we have these three domains the first one is kind of interesting we have very deep and sophisticated Knowledge from spacecraft and from other observations the second domain is kind of mysterious.
But very interesting and the Comets are almost unstudied I mean we’re still discovering major new populations of bodies containing comets large numbers of comets so the first one to be discovered was was this one called the Oort cloud this spherical swarm here’s the sun this spherical swarm of comets surrounding the sun about a hundred thousand Aus across now remember the distance to Neptune is about 30 Aus so this is much bigger than the size of the planetary region of the solar system.
The orbit of Neptune actually would be completely invisible on this plot it’s so small I couldn’t see it so this swarm of comets is inferred from the long period comets which which seemed to fall into the solar system randomly from all directions the equal numbers coming in from the Northern Hemisphere from the southern hemisphere in the direction of the Earth’s motion and behind.
The Earth’s motion and so on it’s a spherical in-falling population of comets and these things we think have been there since the pretty much the origin of the solar system there are probably almost a trillion comets in the Oort cloud there’s a lot of comments comets individually are small and maybe a few miles across but there’s so many of them when you add them all together they carry quite a lot of mass and so they’re important and their distribution is important for understanding the solar system.
And then is this thing that we call Kuiper Belt which is much smaller so here the orbits of the planets Jupiter Saturn Uranus and here’s Neptune going around like this and the Kuiper belt is like this bicycle tire surrounding the solar system that starts at the orbit of Neptune and goes out so it’s kind of a disc it’s kind of fat so it’s kind of a donut maybe more than a thin disc and but this turns out to be the source region for what we call short period comets so comets that don’t fall in from the Oort cloud instead fall in from this region called the Kuiper beltal.
Though asteroid impacts are far more frequent than Comet impacts some comets Crossing Earth’s orbit are considerably larger than any of the known near-earth asteroids thus the largest and most devastating impacts on Earth are likely to be comets this is why scientists and organizations closely Monitor and track these objects in order to set up plans and strategies to mitigate any potential hazards according to NASA.
There is no known Comet or asteroid for that matter that is currently on a collision course with Earth so the probability of a major Collision is quite small in fact as best we can tell no large object is likely to strike the Earth anytime in the next several hundred years so we can relax and enjoy the unique astral phenomenon of the green Comet as it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness this Celestial event in human history.
PEOPLE HAVE SEEN GREEN COMET AFTER 50,000 YEARS IN THE HISTORY.
Balloon high above the U.S. Were ported on earlier is not the only object in the sky people are talking about tonight. We just got this new image in of a historic event, a green comet that has not been visible in the sky since the stone age, about 50,000 years ago, recently photographed above stone henge in England.
Adam frank, professor of physics. said How significant is this comet, and did you get a chance to see it yourself? when there was two miles of ice above my head and the entire world’s population could fit into Clevel and.
That it’s never coming back. It was just discovered last March, so how common is it to discover some thing that old? Well, there’s two kinds of comets. There’s the one that is comea round less than every 200 years like haileys, every 75 years orso.
It’s this new telescope technology that can pick up faint objects in the sky as they change position.
So a comet is basically agiant mountain of mush, of frozen mush, and as it comes into wards the sun, it heats up, and as it heats up, the ices begin to melt and vaporize.
And the green comes from light from the sun ripping apart molecules like cyanide or carbons — two carbon atoms glued together, so that green hue is telling you Again,
the way to find green comet.
Salutations Celestial sightseers I’m David Fuller welcome to eyes on the sky there is a new comet in the sky that you may have seen in the media either online or on some other form of news then that is being called the green Comet that only comes around once every 50,000 years or so and that you may only ever see a green Comet once yeah.
I’ve already seen a green comet before so I don’t know if that’s really true but I will show you how to find it and how it will look from your exact location so if you already have stellarium which I hope you’ve that from as many of my already have and by the way a specific comet into stellarium because it is not an intuitive process.
But I’ll show you how to do it specifically for this one since it’s been a while since I did that so we’re going to go to the configuration excuse meyes configuration window plugins and then under solar system editor we want to configure that and then we’re going to go to the solar system tab there and you’ll notice that there’s a bunch of comets already in there some of them are some pretty well known ones like Halley’s comet is right.
There but the one that we want which is C/2022 E3 is not in there we can scroll through it but it’s not there there’s some 2014 2019s but the one that we want is not there so how do we get that well we want to import orbital elements in MPC format so we do that right up here it says asteroids or comets you want to click on comets for sure and then for the bookmark the one that I use is MPC’s list of observable comets it’s just the easiest one for me to be able to find the comet that I’m looking for and then.
We want to get the orbital element so we’ll click on that and it’s going to open up this other window and we have to scroll down scroll down scroll down scroll down always keep going there’s a lot of them there’s a lot of comets we’re in the 2022s just there and there it is so we want Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF that ZTF stands for the Zwicky Transient Facility.
They were the facility that actually discovered this particular Comet a lot of other comets that have been fairly bright in the news over the last couple years have been neo wise comets you can see C/2022 F2 was a neowise comet but we want this one which is a ZTF so we’re going to click on that and then click add objects and then we go ahead and we close that we close that and we close that and when we zoom in to the north there it is!
I knew approximately where it was going to be at so I already had myself facing towards the North and then when we click on the comet itself you can actually zoom in a little bit more using your mouse wheel if you’d like so you can actually see where the comet is at we can see that the magnitude is supposed to be around 6.16 stellarium really does kind of estimate this sometimes not all that well we have been told that this comet was supposed to be naked eye some people say comets are like cats.
They have tails and do what they want I look at it more like coments are more like customer service have very low expectations for them and if things exceed your expectations be happy that seems to be the better one for me and in this case this coment is likely to not exceed our expectations because as we go forward in time actually I’m going to show you something else see how there’s all this information here that’s way more information than.
We actually need I usually just want the magnitude you can keep all that up there if you want but to me it gets very distracting so I go into the configuration window under information and I just do short and then that gives me the magnitude and that’s all I really want it also gives the right Ascension and declination which is sometimes helpful if you want to do something like using a go-to mount and be able to put in the right Ascension and declination co-ordinates.
That way it’ll go directly to the comet once you’ve done your polar alignment or your two or three star alignment so when we close that that’s where the comet is at if I bring up a few more stars here in stellarium there we go labels and markers been a while since I did that so when we zoom in we can see that we’re close to this star in Draco which is a third magnitude star for most of you you should be able to see that even from Suburban Skies.
This star is a little brighter than that at 2.7 but what’s going to happen is this particular comet is gonna go right by Polaris it also goes by Kocab so let’s watch it over the next few days we can watch how it goes right up here boom so there it’s near Kocab on the 26th and 27th not too far away from that if you’ve also this measuring tool like I have on here it’s that’s not a standard thing on stellarium it is a good thing to add though.
You can find that in the configuration as well we’re only four degrees away from it on the 26th for me on the 27th it’s about uh the same about four or five degrees away maybe a little less than that about three degrees so that would be a good time if you have clear skies then I have had ridiculously cloudy skies for what seems like weeks and weeks and weeks on end so I’ve not even had a chance to look for this comet you’ll also notice that the magnitude of the Comet it self.
When I take off the measuring tool there we’re still only at five six five point six two that’s technically naked eye but you’re really gonna need binoculars I live under bortle four Skies which are fairly dark and I’m sure I would have very a lot of difficulty seeing a spread out magnitude 5.6 object without using binoculars it’s just gonna naked eye would be very difficult and even.
When we go forward in time at its closest point to us which is right around the 30th of January and first of and first of February it’s kind of near Polaris it’s about 10 degrees away there so it’s a little ways away that’s a little further to go 10 degrees is your fist held at arm’s length that distance all the way across so you can measure kind of out that distance off towards the east.
You might be able to find it a little easier that way but we’re still only at magnitude 5.4 that that’s not that bright most people from any urban area and most Sub urban areas are going to have difficulty seeing any fifth magnitude objects period fourth magnitude I was always excited to see when I was in a Bortle 5 area and that was you know people loved to come to my house because I had darker Skies than they did so I’m in Bortle 4 which is even darker now.
I can see magnitude 5 and sometimes six stars without any issue but again this is not a pinpoint object this is spread out so seeing that is going to be pretty challenging binoculars definitely is the way to go you don’t have a lot of bright stars to go by once it’s up by Polaris either because these are you know that these are all like fifth magnitude Stars right in.
Here that’s not helpful I suppose the one thing that you can try to do is wait for it to get up by Capella because it’s going to go straight up and as it does oh I back up I want to actually be able to see the comet there we go pop right on it uh you’ll see right around the fourth and especially the fifth for me anyway it’s only about a degree away from Capella.
So Capella is a nice bright first magnitude star that makes it easy to find I suppose the other thing you could do is somewhere in between there between those times you can just say all right well I know the comet is between Polaris and Capella Polaris is a second magnitude star you can see that from most anywhere Capella’s first magnitude that’s easy to see from just about any location so you can kind of estimate.
Where your distance is using that distance tool and say okay well on the second you know it’s gonna be about 25 degrees from Polaris kind of in the direction of Capella 25 degrees you could measure kind of like this holding your thumb and your pinky out at arm’s length and be able to find the comets so that’s how to download it how to find it I would say definitely use binoculars to see it at minimum or at least locate it.
First it may look a little green more likely to look green in photographs just because the photographs capture light over a longer period of time when we use a longer exposure and your eyes may not pick up that green color which is due to I believe diatomic carbon as it’s kind of sloughed off by sunlight the solar wind hitting those and causing it to Glow in green and if you want to you can use a telescope.
If you have a larger excuse me a shorter focal length you might be able to get a nice field of view with a shorter focal length eyepiece if you just have a longer telescope like this one which is an f/15 and has still just use a a long focal length eye piece that you can and see what you can spot the larger your aperture the more light you gather the more you might be able to see.
That’s going to be the best way to go so that will be the way that you can try to see Comet C 2022 E3 ZTFf in the night sky hopefully if your clouds clear for you like I hope they clear for me or if they are clear for you great share some pictures with me on Twitter I’d love to see them and we’ll see what we might all be able to find of this once in a lifetime 50,000 Years Around.
The Sun comment that may or may not be green that’s all for this week keep your eyes on the sky and your out door lights aimed down.
have you ever seen green comet.
We will investigate our specialtopic of once in 50 000 years green comet is passing through our solar system the comet C 2022 E3 name zft will pass by the Earth in 50,000 years and will bevisible to the naked eye in late January in northern hemisphere in early February in southern hemisphere why Comet C 2022 E3 zft color is green agreen comet is a comet that appears green in color.
When viewed from Earth this can happen due to the presence of the gas Cyanogen CN in the coma or the glowing Halo of gas and dust that surrounds a comet’s nucleus Cyanogen is a molecule made up of one carbon atom and one nitrogen atom and is known to emit a green light.
When excited by the sun’s ultraviolet radiation this is called fluorescence and it is a common phenomenon in comets the green light emitted by Cyanogen is a result of electronic transitions between different energy levels in the molecule another reason why a comet may appear green is due to the presence of the mineral Olivine and the dust that the comet releases as it approaches.
The Sun Olivine is a green mineral that is common in comets and meteorites and it can give the dust a green color this is due to the way the mineral absorbs and reflects different wave lengths of light Olivine is a silicate mineral that is composed of magnesium iron and silicon and it is a common component of the rocky material that makes up comets.
Comets are small celestial bodies that orbit the Sun and long elliptical paths they are composed of a mixture of ice dust and Rock when a comet gets close to the Sun the ice in the comet begins to vaporize releasing dust and gas into a bright glowing coma this coma can extend for hundreds of thousands of kilometers making comets visible from Earth even when they are far away.
The dust and gas released by a comet also form a long tail that always points away from the Sun the tail is formed by the solar wind which is a stream of charged particles that flows out from the Sun the solar wind pushes the dust and gas away from the comet creating the tail comets have been known since ancient times and were considered Omens of great events.
They are relatively rare and unpredictable with only a few becoming visible to the naked eye each year most comets are thought to come from the Oort cloud a vast reservoir of comets that surrounds the solar system at a distance of about 50 000 astronomical units AU from the Sun however some comets such as Halley’s Comet have short orbital periods and are thought to come from the Kuiper belt aregion of the solar system beyond.
The orbit of Neptune green comets are not as common as other comets as most comets are not green in color how ever some famous green comets include Comet Mish holes 2004 and Comet mcnaught 2007. both of these comets were observed to be green in color and their green color was attributed to the presence of Cyanogengas in the coma green.
Comets are a rare and interesting phenomenon in the sky and their appearance can be caused by the presence of Cyanogen gas or Olivine dust in the comor tail they have been observed and studied by astronomers for centuries and continue to Fascinate the public with their rare and beautiful appearances the study of comets in general provides important information.
the processes that led to the formation of our solar system how to spot the green comet observers might need a telescope to see green Comet but as it gets closer to Earth.
They could be able to see it with binoculars or even the unaided eye choose a cloud less night and travel as far away from city lights and to the darkest Skies as you can for the finest viewing the sky will be considerably darker when the moon is little or at the very least when it is below the horizon.
When to watch out for the green comet according to NASA the green Comet should be visible in the northern hemisphere in the early morning hours of late January and in early February in southern hemisphere on January 21st completely shadowed New Moon conditions may offer optimal Dark Skies for Comet observation.
We are excited to hear back your green Comet sighting experience so write us your experience of citing green comet.
(C/2022 E3 Features Explained)
We’re going to briefly discuss the first exciting comment of 2023 that’s potentially going to be visible with the naked eye and that’s obviously already visible even today with even a small amateur telescope resembling something like this the comet currently referred to as C 2022 E3 that made its closest approach to the sun on January 12 2023 and is going to make.
The closest approach to planet Earth on February 1st but what makes this Comet some what intriguing is the fact that the last time it came close to planet Earth was about 50 000 years ago and also the fact that it seems to have already acquired a very bright and very easily visible green coma that you see around the comet with a relatively large and relatively bright tail suggesting.
That it has quite a lot of emissions compared to a typical Comet and that it potentially even possesses a lot of pristine materials from the distant regions of the solar system and at the same time because of its current orbit and because of its current passage it’s most likely never going to return to the inner solar system ever again the current gravitational changes will very likely cause.
This Comet to move to the farthest Ridges of the solar system for up to several million years or to potentially even leave the solar systemen tirely and so in some sense this is the only time ever we might be able to observe it at least for the next few millions of years making this a pretty exciting object but even though in anut shell that’s pretty much all we know about
I really wanted to focus on some of the science behind the colors of these comets and why exactly they acquire certain colors and certain shapes as they come closer to the Sun focusing on all the modern theories and the modern understanding of what exactly causes various coloration of comets and produces various types of tales and the most intriguing part here is that unusual green comma the circular glow around the comet.
Itself something that seems to be unique to Certain comets and something that not all comets acquire so what exactly causes this well here to understand this it’s easier to start with a comet that’s approaching the solar system from Far Far Away now today we believe that there are probably trillions and trillions of various commentary objects far far away from planet Earth in the overt Cloud.
Once in a while some of them make it to the inner solar system but they are very likely composed of relatively similar materials maybe a little bit different but not by much and some comets throughout their travel will actually cross orbits of various planets and might.
Even make it really really close to the Sun itself but by the time they approach Jupiter all of them will very likely start changing at least a little bit at this point the sun becomes powerful enough to affect their surface and to heat up most of the Comets causing certain ices on a surface to start sub limating and to turn into gasus escaping into the rest of the solar system and because.
The majority of comets are usually made out of the same materials same is here we’re talking about things like water ammonia methane carbon monoxide and of course carbondioxide they will all generally acquiresame properties as they move closer to the Sun itself oh and by the way all this was actually discovered relatively recently and is described in the paper.
You can find in the description but it’s all from that recent Rosetta Mission thee-submission that approached the comet 67p and imagine that even alignment on this Comet conducting a very thorough chemical analysis and even creating this beautiful video from the surface of the Comet itself and all this was a result of years and years of investigation and thorough analysis helping us understand exactly.
What happens on these objects and so just like the 67p comet similare ffects started to occur on this new Comet discovered not so long ago at a distance of about 5 astronomical units away from the Sun the UV radiation from the Sun begins to change some of the elements on the surface and the first one to be affected is carbon monoxidethe gas.
That begins to be ionized and turns into Co ions and these ions because they’re charged are now affected by a lot of solar wind that also has charged particles on the inside the solar wind begins to push on the ions and moves them farther and farther away from the comet in the opposite direction from the Sun this of course being a result of ionization effects and so the first thing to be produced in typical comets is this very long blue tail.
The tail that’s going to be pointed away from the sun because of the ionic interaction and this is normally what most comets have as a matter of fact this is normally how we Define a comet everything else is extra some comets however do make it past Jupiter and even start to approach inner planets and if they managed to reach Mars they suddenly experience other effects with the entire surface acquiring a lot of emissions from every direction creating a relatively large Mist around.
The comet itself to some extent some of this is visible in or those pictures taken by the Rosetta Mission and in essence this is a mixture of gas but also small dust particles and this creates what we refer to as the coma the cometary body itself and the first thing that usually happens here is this unusual Green Glow that you see around it the same glue that you see around this recently discovered Comet and intriguingly there is really only one way to produce.
This green glow which also explains why it’s only in a circular formation around the comet it’s produced by different components containing what’s known as the carbon-carbon bond and sometimes components with carbon nitrogen bond salthough in this case it’s a slightly different color in more common terms these are known as the diatomic carbon and Cyanogen bonds and it just so happens that when both of them are ionized or when both of them be come excited.
Once again as a result of the UV radiation from the Sun the transition of electrons from the higher state to the Lower State ends up releasing a certain type of photons that result in the production of this very specific green light but in this case these ionized particles remain excited for a very short period of time with the ionization disappearing after two days.
Which basically means that as some of these ions move away from the comet they lose their ability to produce the light and that’s exactly why we have this unusual circle around the comet producing a song with diffuse light with the size of the circle really depending on the amount of emissions and the power of emissions coming from the surface of the Comet itself but.
When ever we see these unusual formations or whenever we see this green glow there’s also sometimes a chance that the comet is actually going to fall apart and when that happens the entire brightness of the Comet will usually increase dramatically because suddenly there are just a lot more emissions coming from every where and that’s because the UV radiation.
That essentially produces all of these emissions also has a chance to break apart some of the surface on the comet and cause it to eventually fall apart which of course implies that there is a chance that even this Comet might actually even get brighter if it does fall apart as it approaches the Sun but apart from this initial tale and the creation of the green comma all of the dust from.
The Surface starts to create another tail a kind of a yellowish white tail that’s essentially mostly made out of dust and in this case even though the Iron Tail will always be pointing directly away from the Sun the dust tail follows a more elliptical orbit around the Sun and that’s because it doesn’t really interact with the charge particles from the Sun and they even get slightly different shapes.
The Iron Tail moves much faster and is generally more narrow as well whereas the dust tail is a lot more wide with the dust particles also varying in size and moving around with different speeds and more importantly this does tail then create something we observe on Earth several times a year you can actually find this really really cool map created by in Webster.
That kind of shows you pretty much all of the major meteor showers including the ones that are happening right now but essentially all of this was the result of a dust tail from a comet that used to exist a long time ago which of course suggests that all of the Comets that came into the inner solar system at some point left all of these dust tails that are now interacting with all of the planets inside the solar system and are also probably adding quite a lot of different materials to every planet orbiting.
The Sun and here on Earth they create beautiful meteor showers but for this to happen on planet Earth the orbit of that previous comet has to actually intersect with the orbit of planet Earth this doesn’t really happen very often but assuming that the dust tail is really white can still result in meteor showers sometime in the future and that’s pretty much the lifetime of a typical Comet coming really close to the Sun on some of them do survive and come back within hundreds or even thousands of years.
But the majority fall apart evaporate or changed ramatically turn into much smaller objects or maybe even disappearing completely some of them like 67p change a little bit every time they come close to the Sun but don’t really change to odramatically yet others can either fall apart completely and turn into small objects almost completely disappearing from existence but I guess the more intriguing part is that even though almost 4 000 comments are known to us today.
The scientists believe that there are probably billions more on the out skirts of the solar system that west ill have not seen or know nothing about and because so few of them do make it to the inner solar system we actually don’t really know much about them and barely understand what effects these objects have on the solar system and more importantly on planet Earth but because of all these emissions and because of the amount of material.
They release during their passage we can only assume that they do have some effect we just don’t really know what this effect is and so there’s definitely so much to learn even about this new Comet detected last year and strangely enough some of these effects coming from these comets have actually only recently started to be described by various studies.
for example
it’s only in 2021 that the scientists finally confirmed that the unusual green comma are definitively created through the dicarbon ions that are then destroyed by the sun it was only a theory for many many years actually since 1930s but it was not artificially confirmed through experiments until only two years ago and so definitely quite a lot of things to learn about comets and quite a lot to understand about their effects on planet Earth.
But until we learn something else about this specific Comet or until future discoveries that’s pretty much this with someone who has learned about space and Sciences come back tomorrow to learn something else and maybe support the show on patreon by Julian Cinema version or by buying a wonderful person t-shirt.
second time green comet passing.
Something big is coming a very uncommon incident is set to take place for the first time in 50 000 years it is showing in the sky a cosmic snow ball it is the green Comet what is the green Comet I know you are anxious to know what this is about stay tuned as we understand this passing through the sky soon a recently discovered Comet will soon make an appearance in the night sky for the first time in 5,000 decades following NASA’s report.
This was discovered on March 2nd 2022 by astronomers using this Wiki transient facilities wide field survey camera at the Palomar observatory in San Diego County California the cometis named c2022e3 having an orbit around the Sun that passes through the outer reaches of the solar system hence it takes a long journey and a long time to showing by Earth again.
According to the planetary Society this icy Celestial phenomenon which has consistently lightened as it gets to the sun will subsequently make its closest passive Earth between Feb very first and February 2nd around 26 Million Miles Away according to Earth sky as the comet nears Earth observers will be able to spot it near the bright star Polaris also called the North Star and.
It should be visible earlier in the evening the comet should be seen through binoculars in the morning sky for Sky Watchers in the northern hemisphere during most of January and those in the southern hemisphere in the first few days in February according to NASA depending on how bright it becomes in the coming weeks see 2022 E3 unaided eyes may even be able to see it in the dark eyes toward the end of January.
While sky watchers in the northern hemisphere using telescopes and binoculars should look low on the north eastern Horizon just before midnight to spot it on January 12th according to Earth sky till comets are amazingly unpredictable and because see 2022e3 is a long period common its visibility is even less predictable than its Brethren that takes shorter trips around the Sun they take 200 or 20 million years to complete an orbit.
These Dusty snow balls are more than just phenomenal Cosmic views they may have given life Essentials like water and organic compounds to our early planet and studying them could uncover hints about the Genesis of our solar system a comet develops its over whelming atmosphere from the sun’s heat which turns some of its icy Center directly into gas.
This produces a shade of dust and gas that is pushed off by the wind from the Sun and radiation creating the characteristic tails what are comets made of comets are made of a number of compounds which include mineral grains carbon dioxide and dry ice nearly all comets are made up of two tails the ion tail in the dust tail the ion tail is yellowish in color.
While the latter is blue it is essential to note that Comet tails are always projected away from the Sun why green and not red blue or other colors regularly with extreme consistency from Beyond the orbit of Neptune comets dive into the inner solar system they stay cold Frozen and inactive from Beyond the orbit of Saturn nothing about them changes though.
They are always in motion but as soon as they get to the orbit of Jupiter being inclose proximity to the sun changes things the exterior parts of the Comet become hot and the frozen ice on the surface begins to vaporize as the surface molecules are pushed away by the radiation and wind from the Sun almost immediately.
The comet Sparks with the reflected light from the sun and the two tails possessing a gray and a blue color respectively with an eerie green comb around the center now I see you are curious about why that happens let’s see comets are discovered from a mix of Rocky components just like what makes up the Earth’s mantle dust and Ice well ice here is not only called water ice but also has erratic components like dry ice methane ammonia and carbon monoxide.
The whole integral part of cometary ice was investigated by the Rosetta Mission but these are the big five fore mostly as the comet approaches the Sun the intensity of the ray of ultraviolet light striking it becomes strong enough that it can begin to ionize the dormant molecule there carbon monoxide this generates plenty of positive carbon monoxide ions which emit directly away from the Sun this ion turns into a blue tail but becoming the first comet-like feature to appear as a comet begins to heat up.
The ion tail steadily projects directly away from the Sun and is always blue in color however as the comet gets even closer to the Sun some where around the orbit of Mars it heats up further the nucleus of the Comet heats up and causes more of the ice to melt and diffuse away from the surface forming a large diffused set of particles around the earth.
Other planets like Mercury without an atmosphere can also possess meteor showers but the coma is more than dust a gas is also formed from the sublimated compounds that were components of the Comet this body doesn’t only have simple ice and rocks but also more complex molecules made out of these basic building blocks mostly hydrogen oxygen carbon and nitrogen two molecules.
That are of specific concern are cyanide Cyanogen and diatomic carbon this tealor blue green color develops because when these gases are stimulated by the ultraviolet light present in sun light their bound electrons increase greatly to higher energy levels a basic rule of atomic trans transitions but electrons don’t stay forever in a high energy condition.
They reduce to lower energy levels and when this happens some of those transitions have effects on an emission line that falls in a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes are sensitive to are comets dangerous to the Earth the effects of comets on the earth seem to be naturally hazardous because many of them are in orbits that cross.
The Earths and mays mash it about 10 long period comets on the order of one kilometer in diameteror even bigger cross Earths orbit annually because Earth is a comparatively small Target and space is infinitely wide the impact probability per comet on average very low a random long period Comet will hit Earth for every 454 million comets.
That travel across its orbit following the estimated rate of 10 comets traveling across Earth’s orbit per year that results in a mean time between long period Comet impacts of 45 million years however because long period comets travel on extremely erratic and highly inclined orbits their average impact speeds are much higher than for other their Celestial body that is asteroids.
The average long period Comet will hit Earth with a speed of 51.7 kilometers per second if the impact velocity is measured by the probability of impact for a peculiar orbit then the weighted mean impact velocity Rises rapidly to 54.6 kilometers per second these values are much greater than those for Earth Crossing asteroids.
Which are basically just about 15 kilometers per second so guys let’s get ready to see this amazing Blazing Green Light displaying in the sky be reminded that after that the next opportunity to see Comet see 2022e3 won’t come around for a long long time this icy body has a long orbit that takes it on a journey around.
The Sun and far into the outer solar system over thousands of years again the comet officially known as c2022e3 will make its closest approach to the sun onThursday and could be bright enough to be seen through telescopes and binoculars the first chance to see the comet will be in the early morning sky on Thursday sometime after midnight.
But Before Dawn make sure you are sitting on the edge of your seats with your telescope to capture the amazing moments of the green Commons you can do that with friends or family it would be absolutely fun remember to get your telescopes ready as the Snake Eyes would lack the ability to see it in its Radiance well.
It was really an amazing ride in space getting alerted about the arrival of the green Comet will you prepare to see it well if you eventually do we would love to hear what you think about it thanks for tuning in to Starburst.
