Holmes or UFO?

[alokmohan]

When Comet 17P/Holmes burst on the scene last week — brightening by a factor of a million in just 2 days — no one knew for sure how long it would last. The good news: The comet continues to put on a nice show for Northern Hemisphere observers the whole night.<br /><br />The nearly unprecedented outburst raised Comet 17P/Holmes from a 17th-magnitude object visible only through large telescopes into plain view without optical aid. The comet now shines at 2nd magnitude and has yet to show any signs of dimming.<br /><br />The comet lies about 30° high — one-third of the way from the horizon to straight overhead — at 9 p.m. local daylight time. It then appears about twice as high as the bright star Capella. For observers at mid-northern latitudes, the comet climbs directly overhead between 2 and 3 a.m. Even better, the waning gibbous Moon doesn't rise until around 11 p.m. Halloween night, and it comes up about an hour later (with less of it lit) each succeeding night.<br /><br />Unlike most bright comets, Holmes doesn't possess a long tail. To the naked eye, it looks like a modestly bright star. But the major surface eruption that caused the comet's outburst ejected tons of dust into its vicinity. Binoculars easily reveal the comet as a fuzzy blob, and telescopes have started to show some details. Any tail, however, points mostly http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6168

 

[Smersh]

There is a beautiful picture of the comet, published at Spaceweather.com today, taken by Italian astronomer Paolo Candy, who has christened it "The Jellyfish Comet." <br /><br />http://spaceweather.com/ (story and picture can be found in archives after today, 6th Nov.)<br /><br />Click on the picture at the link for a larger version.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <h1 style="margin:0pt;font-size:12px">----------------------------------------------------- </h1><p><font color="#800000"><em>Lady Nancy Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea."<br />Churchill: "Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."</em></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Website / forums </strong></font></p> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

Holmes?

 

[alokmohan]

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has probed the bright core of Comet 17P/Holmes which, to the delight of sky watchers, mysteriously brightened by nearly a million-fold in a 24-hour period beginning October 23, 2007. <br /><br />Astronomers have used Hubble's powerful resolution to study Comet Holmes' core for clues about how the comet brightened. The orbiting observatory's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) monitored the comet for several days, snapping images on 29 Oct., 31 Oct. and 4 Nov. Hubble's crisp "eye" can see details as small as 54 kilometres across, providing the sharpest view yet of the source of the spectacular brightening. <br /><br />The Hubble image at right, taken on 4 Nov., shows the heart of the comet. The central portion of the image has been specially processed to highlight variations in the dust distribution near the nucleus. About twice as much dust lies along the east-west direction (the horizontal direction) as along the

 

[alokmohan]

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has probed the bright core of Comet 17P/Holmes which, to the delight of sky watchers, mysteriously brightened by nearly a million-fold in a 24-hour period beginning October 23, 2007. <br /><br />Astronomers have used Hubble's powerful resolution to study Comet Holmes' core for clues about how the comet brightened. The orbiting observatory's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) monitored the comet for several days, snapping images on 29 Oct., 31 Oct. and 4 Nov. Hubble's crisp "eye" can see details as small as 54 kilometres across, providing the sharpest view yet of the source of the spectacular brightening. <br /><br />The Hubble image at right, taken on 4 Nov., shows the heart of the comet. The central portion of the image has been specially processed to highlight variations in the dust distribution near the nucleus. About twice as much dust lies along the east-west direction (the horizontal direction) as along the north-south direction (the vertical direction), giving the comet a "bow tie" appearance. <br /><br />The composite colour image at left, taken Nov. 1 by the amateur astronomer Alan Dyer shows the complex structure of the entire coma, consisting of concentric shells of dust and a faint tail emanating from the comet's right side. <br /><br />The nucleus -- the small solid body that is the source of the comet's activity -- is still swaddled in bright dust, even 12 days after the spectacular outburst. "Most of what Hubble sees is sunlight scattered from microscopic particles," explained Hal Weaver of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory of Laurel, Maryland in the USA, who led the Hubble investigation. "But we may finally be starting to detect the emergence of the nucleus itself in this final Hubble image." <br /><br />Hubble first observed Comet 17P/Holmes on June 15, 1999, when there was virtually no dusty shroud around the nucleus. Although Hubble cannot resolve the nucleus, astronomers inferred its size by meas

 

[alokmohan]

omet 17P/Holmes remains a striking target for binoculars, small telescopes, and even the unaided eye. Take the time to see this unusual visitor, which leapt from obscurity to celebrity October 23. <br /><br />For reasons astronomers don't entirely understand, the cosmic iceball flared in brightness by a million times in just 2.5 days. This outburst propelled the comet from a faint-fuzzy best viewed in a large amateur telescope to a star-like object observers throughout the Northern Hemisphere could easily see in a moonlit sky. <br /><br />The comet subsequently expanded into a fuzzy patch and now rivals the Moon in size. Holmes has faded relatively little in terms of astronomers' brightness scale, where it now hovers near magnitude 3, but its light is spread out over a larger area. <br /> <br /> <br />Bright Comet 17P/Holmes lies in the constellation Perseus, in the northeastern sky after darkness falls. Astronomy: Roen Kelly [larger image] <br />Some observers dubbed 17P/Holmes the ultimate "urban comet." While it lacks a spectacular tail, the comet initially was easy to spot from urban locations, and it can still be seen visually in suburban areas. Take the time to observe it carefully. Visual observers may notice that it appears distinctly un-starlike. Low-power binoculars reveal a ghostly disk surrounding a bright center. <br /><br />Amateurs who image Comet Holmes are finding detailed structures related to its recent blast of dust and gas. And, although Holmes is an old, relatively inactive comet, many observers now report just a hint of a bluish gas tail. <br /> <br /> <br />Astronomy Senior Editor Francis Reddy made this composite of Comet 17P/Holmes from images captured Nov. 11. He used infrared, green, and blue filters to create the view. Click here to see a Google maps view that places this image in the sky. Francis Reddy <br />Comet Holmes currently lies 151 million miles (244 million km) from Earth and 234 million miles (377 million km) from the Sun. In early May, t