[meteorite-list] Comets To Put On Morning Sky Show

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:15 2004
Message-ID: <200404201957.MAA14687_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3642725.stm

Comets to put on morning sky show
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News
April 20, 2004

Astronomers say there could be three
comets visible to the unaided eye in the
night sky in a few weeks' time.

Comet Bradfield has just rounded the Sun
and is heading for the dawn sky. It will be
visible around 24 April.

Comet Linear, too, is promising and
should be seen at northern latitudes in the
morning sky on about the same date.

Finally, Comet Neat may be visible
though experienced observers say it will be
a week or two before it is known how
bright the object will be.

Solar encounter

Comet Bradfield was discovered by veteran
comet hunter William Bradfield of Australia.
He saw it on 23 March whilst sweeping the
evening twilight with his home-made telescope.

Bradfield has discovered 18 comets since he
first started looking in 1972.

On 19 April, the comet was captured in an
image taken by the Solar Heliospheric
Observatory (Soho) satellite as it passed
close to the Sun. At its closest, the
comet was well inside the orbit Mercury - the
closest planet to the Sun.

It should be visible to the unaided eye when
it moves further away from the Sun in
the coming weeks.

There are two other comets in the sky that
should be visible without a telescope,
although astronomers warn that predicting a
comet's brightness is tricky.

Comet Linear was found in 2002 by the
Linear automated sky survey project.
During the last week of April, it should
appear in the morning sky in the
constellation of Pisces, just above the
eastern horizon at dawn.

Remarkable pictures of it have been taken
by astronomers Gianluca Masi and Franco
Mallia, from the Campo Catino
Observatory in Italy, using the Las
Campanas telescope in Chile.

"It was only a few degrees above the horizon
but the images we obtained of it were great,"
Gianluca Masi told BBC News Online.

"The images showed an amazing, detailed-rich
tail."

>From the Northern Hemisphere, Comet Linear
will be difficult to see as it will be
low down in the morning twilight.

Neat comet

The third comet, Comet Neat, found by the
Near Earth Asteroid Tracking project, is
a little more uncertain than the other two.

Astronomers will know more when it has had
its encounter with the Sun. It should be
visible low on the southeast horizon in the
last week of April.

"We have been following the comet over the
past few months as it increased in brightness
and started showing a tail of gas and dust,"
Gianluca Masi said.

"We decided to take a detailed picture that
shows some very interesting structures in the
tail. We believe they are dust waves."

Part of the uncertainty stems from the fact
that Comets Linear and Neat are thought to be
comets making their first approach to the Sun,
and such first-timers are always a little
unpredictable.
Received on Tue 20 Apr 2004 03:57:47 PM PDT