Posted on 07/24/2013 6:55:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin
A comet that could put on a dazzling show when it zooms through the inner solar system later this year is already blasting out huge amounts of gas and dust, new observations by a NASA spacecraft show.
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The comet, which is about 3 miles (5 km) wide, is cruising toward a close encounter with the sun on Nov. 28, when it will skim just 724,000 miles (1.16 million km) above the solar surface. ISON could blaze up dramatically around this time, perhaps shining as brightly as the full moon in the sky, researchers say. But there's no guarantee that ISON will live up to the hype. For example, it could break apart as it approaches the sun, fizzling out as some other "comet of the century" candidates have done over the years.
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Comet ISON is becoming more active as it warms up during this epic journey. Researchers expect to get an increasingly detailed look at ISON's composition over time, because different materials boil off at different distances from the sun.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
As long as there’s no Hammer Fall we’re cool.
Increased Sun Spot activity is why Comet are associated with bad times on Earth.
Hope it’s better than Halley’s Comet turned out to be. Course, that’s not sayin’ much, seeing as how Halley’s Comet was as luminous and exciting as the signal indicator on a 63 Biscayne...
Ice cream sundae...
Comet....it’ll make your teeth turn green
Comet....it tastes like gasoline
Comet...it’ll make you vomit
So get some Comet, and vomit, today
Yeah, the last Halley’s show was the worst viewing in many centuries. The one right before that was spectacular, though.
Hopefully not.
That book scared me. The thought of a 2000ft wave coming in from the GOM is numbing.
It wouldn’t be the first time. The rapids way up the Brazos river are turbidite deposits from Chicxulub.
That was a bad day to be a dinosaur...
Will this comet produce a spectacular meteor shower for centuries to come? That is what produces m. showers, after all.
I wonder just how far inland that wave went. Wasn’t the shoreline vastly different then? I haven’t been able to find any really good answers to that one. Closest estimate I can find is something like 150km inland. Staggering if true.
And that wasn't the worst of it...
From the description “blasting out huge amounts of gas” what are they going to name the comet? Obama Comet? Congressional Comet? Hillary Comet?
I don’t see how a comet that gets as close as 724,000 miles from the Sun could possibly survive. The temperatures in the corona alone would bust it up nicely.
63 Biscayne, all jacked up.
I-SON
Bigger than comet Kohoutek?
The next one is supposed to be spectacular as well.
How very.... Urban?
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