Tag: comet

Fire in the sky! Watch out for comet SW3! It may cause a massive meteor shower with more than 1,000 fireball per hours in late May

Strange Sounds – May 23, 2022

Heads up! On May 30-31, 2022, we might have a brief-but-intense meteor display, thanks to a comet that split apart in 1995 and is apparently still fragmenting. It might happen, as Earth passes through a particularly dense stream of icy particles which the comet left behind in the years 1995, 1897 and 1892.

Intense meteor display possible from comet SW3

If it does happen, we’ll see a grand display of meteors! And, even if it doesn’t, this comet is one you’ll want to come to know.

The meteor shower is the Tau Herculids. Its parent comet is 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, aka SW3. Astronomers found this comet in 1930. It orbits the sun every 5.4 years. And the comet will be in our evening sky again, in July and August 2022. It’s not an intrinsically bright comet. But it’s an exceptionally interesting comet. In 1995, astronomers watched as this comet began to fracture and litter its orbit with an increasing amount of debris.

That’s why, by some recent calculations, the May 2022 Tau Herculid meteor shower – spawned by SW3 – might be an intense display. Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, said:

“This is going to be an all or nothing event. If the debris from SW3 was traveling more than 220 miles per hour (354 kph) when it separated from the comet, we might see a nice meteor shower. If the debris had slower ejection speeds, then nothing will make it to Earth and there will be no meteors from this comet.”

https://strangesounds.org

“Poisonous Comet” That Witnessed the Construction of Egyptian Pyramids Returns to Our Solar System

Sputnik News – April 4, 2020

Stargazers may soon be treated to quite a spectacle as an ancient comet that hasn’t been seen near Earth for thousands of years is making a return trip to our part of the galactic space.

As Lyudmila Koshman, astronomer at the Moscow Planetarium, explained, the C/2019Y4 Atlas comet, whose core contains poisonous chemical compound called cyanogen, visited our solar system last time during the 4th millennium BC, “back when the great pyramids were being built in Egypt”.

“It may become the brightest one in our sky for the last seven years”, she said. “Due to the solar wind, the comet starts sprouting two tails – one gaseous, the other comprised of dust – which give it an especially spectacular look”.

According to Koshman, the comet will pass the Earth at a distance of about 117 million kilometers on 27 May, and on 31 May, it will approach the Sun at a distance of about 38 million kilometers, which is less than the distance between the Sun and Mercury – the closest planet to the heart of our solar system.

The astronomer noted that the comet’s greenish hue is a product of cyanogen contained within its core becoming fluorescent when bombarded by UV radiation, and that by the end of April, the comet will become as bright as the stars of Ursa Major so it will be visible to the naked eye.

https://sputniknews.com