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With the recent apparition of Comet Mc Naught, C2006 P1, the camera were clicking away merrily. Go to our site http://www.astro.ware.co.za and join the groups.
I intend to have a competition of judging the best Comet Image and award a prize.
All images entered must not be bigger than 50kb and a high resolution image be available on request.
The Image above is copyrighted |
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Comets, Meteors and Meteorites
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These wanderers from the earliest of time, meandering around the sun, light years distant, occasionally drops in to the inner Solar System to have a fleeting look and then leaves again to go back into the deep, freezing void of space. When they come too close to a planet, they get trapped and fall towards the planet and smashes into the Atmosphere. Normally, they will shatter and explode between 80 and 110 kM above the atmosphere.
Fragments might survive to the ground and they are called meteorites, the largest in the World, being the Hobart Meteor in Namibia.
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| Sometimes, these gaseous frozen interstellar wanderers, take a leisurely glide through the inner system, but due to the heat of the sun, suddenly erupt into a spectacular ethereal display. It is commonly known as a comet. |
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This is my image of Comet Linear 2001 A2 |
Though it was quite uninteresting initially, it suddenly erupted into a beauty with whiskers and tail breaks !!!! |
Introduction |
Comets
are "dirty snowballs" from deep space and orbit the sun at vast distances, 32 to 64 times further than the earth is from the sun (1 Astronomical Unit or AU)
in areas known as "The Kuiper Belt" and the "Oort
Cloud" named after these famous astronomers who initially proposed these areas.. Many new
objects have, in recent years, been discovered there, some nearly
as big as Pluto's moon, Charon.
This is a reason, why Pluto has been reclassified and is a totally new group of Solar System Objects. They are called TNO's or Trans Neptunian Objects known as Putoids. As they are deep space objects and very
faint, you need some good
equipment and a dark sky to observe and discover them.
As I previously mentioned, a lot of good luck and diligence is
needed to be successful. A good knowledge of the sky is
essential to any potential comet and asteroid hunter. |
South African Comets |
It
has been many years since a South African had discovered a comet. The last person being Jose Campos (1) and prior to him, the Late Jack Bennet (2) ,
who had the distinction of discovering one of the brightest comets
of the previous century. South Africa's track record is poor, and the Aussie's
are giving us a bad hiding in this regard, as they are the leading
country in the world as far hunting these elusive objects go. The only feeble excuse I can use, is the total lack of implementation of
Laws and Regulations by local Governments regarding light pollution and the misconception of the public that you need a Phd Degree to do amateur astronomy.
Guide lines are quite clear in The
Dark Sky Association documentation. Here I congratulate the American Nation !!!!!!
Most
amateurs live in or near cities and the visibility is a very poor
3.5 ~ 4th Magnitude.
MOST GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERIES IN ASTRONOMY HAS BEEN DONE BY AMATEURS!!!
Most children living around Gauteng, have
NEVER seen the Milky Way and might be lucky to see 20 stars. How can we teach our children about the stars, if they cannot even see them??????
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These
images of Comet Linear 2001 A2, were taken 2 days apart. Image by
Bill Hollenbach
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Meteorites and Shooting Stars
When these comets are trapped by the giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, they fall into an elliptical orbit around the sun and never leave the Solar System.
Then they become PERIODIC COMETS.
Some of the famous comets are P/ Enke, P/Halley and P/Schwassmann-Wachmann.
These comets come past on a regular basis and become quite well observed. Scientists are puzzled by what happened to comet Halley, as it suddenly flared up 1000 times brighter than it should have about 10 years after passing the inner solar system.
When these comets eventually die off, their rocky cores and dust still orbits the sun and occasionally they cross the earth's path and become known as shooting stars. On occasions a huge rock will enter the atmosphere and fall to the ground, ONLY when it hits the ground does it become a meteorite.
For more information I will suggest you visit the site of Bill Arnett at:
Meteors, Meteorites and Impacts
Classification of Meteors
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