[AZ-Observing] Re: Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)

  • From: Lynn Blackburn <lynnrb11@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:22:18 -0800 (PST)

 
 Lovejoys passage through the solar corona resembles a jet aircraft contrails 
on earth.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJ3Xbl9nZM
 
From: Tom Polakis <tpolakis@xxxxxxx>
To: AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; evac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 9:31 PM
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)

An interesting sungrazing comet will be entering the field of the SOHO LASCO C3 
camera on Wednesday.  At that time, it's expected to be around magnitude 5, 
which should make it easy to see in the frame.  Then it may reach magnitude -2 
or so before it almost certainly gets torn to shreds by the sun.  If it somehow 
survives perihelion -- which is only one-tenth of the sun's diameter -- it may 
become visible in the night sky.

The comet was discovered by Terry Lovejoy in Australia, who uses an inexpensive 
setup with a C8 and a consumer-level camera.  It is extremely rare for 
sungrazers to be discovered in this manner.  Terry has discovered more than 140 
sungrazing comets by looking at frames downloaded from orbiting solar 
observatories.

A good source of information for this comet, presented blog style, is the 
Sungrazing Comets Web site (they've got a site for everything!) run by Karl 
Battams.  http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=news/birthday_comet .  
Already the comet has entered the STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations 
Observatory) frame, as you can see on his site.


Comet Lovejoy will enter the SOHO LASCO C3 frame from the south early on 
Wednesday.  Look for it at this site.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/

It's possible that we will get to see the destruction of a sungrazing comet 
this week.
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