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. -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list. -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.