The Great Comet of 1881, as observed 142 years ago today on the night of June 25–26th. Plate XI from Étienne Léopold Trouvelot’s “Astronomical Drawings” (1882). See more imagery of comets, meteors, meteorites and shooting stars through the ages at The Public Domain Review’s “Flowers of the Sky,” https://buff.ly/2M7wVjn
THE COMET BOOK (1587)
(Images and text from THE PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW.)
“This stunning set of images come from a 16th-century treatise on comets, created anonymously in Flanders (now northern France) and now held at the Universitätsbibliothek Kassel. Commonly known as The Comet Book (or Kometenbuch in German), its full title translates as “Comets and their General and Particular Meanings, According to Ptolomeé, Albumasar, Haly, Aliquind and other Astrologers.””
There’ve been some remarkable photos of Comet Leonard as it approaches the sun. Here are a few recent ones, taken from Sky and Telescope.
I’ve been neglecting this site, I know But here’s something worth coming back for: Comet NEOWISE, which is lighting up skies all over the world. It’s visible right now to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere. Here’s a recent photo from Slovakia:
Stunning, right? NEOWISE (named after the space observation satellite that first spotted it) has a 6,800-year orbit, which means it won’t pass this way again until the year 8820, when the Earth will be nothing but a black cinder ruled over by evil robots.
Space.com has useful information on how to view the comet, pasted here:
By
“If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, you can see it,” said Joe Masiero, deputy principal investigator of NEOWISE, the NASA space telescope that discovered the comet, in a NASA Science Live webcast Wednesday (July 15). “As the next couple of days progress, it will get higher in the evening sky, so you’re going to want to look northwest right under the Big Dipper.”
There are a few more comet-observing tips to keep in mind, according to Masiero.
First, you’re going to want to try and get away from city lights and set up in a location with a clear, unobstructed view of the northwest horizon.
Then, find out what time your local sunset is. You’ll want to wait until 45 minutes after sunset before hunting the comet.
“What you want to do is go out right around the time that the first stars start to show up. You’re not going to be able to see it before that,” Masiero said. “It’s probably about as bright as some of the stars in the Big Dipper.”
To the unaided eye, Comet NEOWISE will look like a fuzzy star with a bit of a tail, according to a NASA guide. But binoculars or a small telescope offer a much better view.
And finally, NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day” is posting some remarkable photos of Comet NEOWISE from around the world right now on their Facebook site, “Sky.” Check it out. Below are just a few.
Get out there and look for it tonight. Happy viewing.
Image from “Flowers of the Sky,” by Richard A. Proctor (1879). I’ll post more soon, but if you’re impatient you can see lots of wonderful images of comets here at Public Domain Review.
“When a comet appears in the Constellation Hydra, there is war and some conspire to overthrow the emperor. Fish and salt are expensive. Rice also becomes expensive. People hate life and don’t even want to speak of it.” (Record of the World’s Change, Li Ch’un Feng, 602-667 AD)
Image from Das Wundereichenbuch (The Book of Miracles), Augsburg, 1550
In case you were wondering whatever happened to the Rosetta spacecraft and its probe Philae that crash-landed on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko back in November and then went dead: the probe has awakened. As of yesterday, the little lost lander was sending signals again back to Earth.
“Philae is doing very well,” project manager Stephan Ulamec said.
Here on a quiet, cloudy morning in New Orleans, this news cheers me.
The spacecraft Rosetta, which has been trailing Comet Churyomov-Gerasimenko for over 10 years, recently sent back these amazing close-up photos of the comet. Read more about it in the New York Times, here.
Astronomers are excited about Comet Siding Spring’s very close encounter with Mars this coming Sunday. Siding Spring was spotted back in January 2013. An Oort Cloud comet, it’s said to be the size of a small mountain, with a million-year orbit. A posse of spacecraft and Mars rovers are jockeying into position right now to observe it. Here on Earth, the comet will be visible with binoculars in the Southern Hemisphere.
How close will Comet Siding Spring come to Mars? 83,000 miles–which in space distances is a hair’s breadth, about a third of the distance between here and the Moon. Last year, before they’d plotted out its trajectory, astronomers were genuinely worried that the comet might hit Mars.
Its trajectory is such that it’ll never get closer to the Earth than some 83 million miles, so no need to panic yet. Of course, passing that close to Mars, there’s a possibility that Siding Spring might upset the Red Planet’s orbit, throwing the whole solar system out of whack, in which case, well . . . Best not to think about that.
The big news in space today is that the European Space Agency’s “Rosetta” spacecraft has, after a ten-year journey, finally rendezvoused with its target, Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenk.
Here’s a picture of Comet C-G up close:
I mentioned the comet chaser in a post back in January. The New York Times has a front-page article about the Rosetta mission in the paper today.
The Times writes:
“From a distance, the blurry blob initially looked somewhat like a rubber duck. As the details came into focus, it began to bear a closer resemblance to a knob of ginger flying through space.”
The comet’s far enough from the sun (330 million miles) that it’s still just a hunk of ice and rock. As it gets closer, the sun will heat the comet and it will begin to acquire the familiar coma and tail of a comet.
The Rosetta spacecraft will accompany Comet C-G for a year, flying right alongside it as it circles the sun.