[meteorite-list] Stardust Flyby Images of Comet Wild 2

From: Bernhard <rendelius_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:00 2004
Message-ID: <000f01c3d5c2$21b81630$a615170a_at_PDO>

This is a layman's answer:

A comet only looses substantial matter when close(r) to the sun. So yes,
after some time he disintegrates, but this can take a long time,
especially when he's big. Some comets' orbits are even disturbed in a
way that they drop into the sun - they are gone then, naturally.

  _____

Best regards,
Bernhard "Rendelius" Rems

CEO RPGDot Network

 
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-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-admin_at_meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-admin_at_meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of
joseph_town_at_att.net
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 9:25 AM
To: Sterling K. Webb
Cc: meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Stardust Flyby Images of Comet Wild 2

Hi all,

I know I should research this myself but I hope I can get a relatively
brief
answer upon which I can look further into this question if deemed
worthwhile.
How does a small object like a comet, especially, travel for billions of

years constantly venting and releasing matter continue to exist? Why
doesn't
it dissipate into virtual nothingness?

Bill Kieskowski



 
> Hi,
>
> I was fascinated by the first flyby image that was
> released (the one featured on APOD). Despite its generally
> fuzzy appearance, there is a lot of detail buried in there
> that I hope we'll get to see when the wizards are through
> massaging the images for detail and content.
> I took a copy of that image and squeezed it as hard as I
> could. I doubled the spacing of all the pixels and filled in
> the intermediate spaces with eight-way median values, twiddled
> with its histogram to re-distribute the greyscale values to a
> more normal distribution, then stomped all over it with a
> square sharpness filter.
> I found that is LOTS of detail there, although my
> ham-handed efforts left some messy artifacts. For example, the
> "crater-like" circular features do not have uniformly shaded
> bottoms. They're not smooth (nor flat I would guess), but
> usually show a single deep dark conoid pit that's probably a
> large primary vent for outgassing.
> The walls of these "crater-like" features show some linear
> features, as if the depressions had formed by a slump-like
> collapse, perhaps from the rapid removal of material from
> beneath the "slump" by outgassing. Lots of tantalizing
> features not quite sharp enough to interpret. I'm left with
> the impression of a surface with lots of varying contours.
> Many of the smaller high contrast features seem to be
> albedo-related, as if between light and dark materials,
> perhaps at smaller "un-slumped" vents.
> If anyone's interested, you can view this roughly enhanced
> image at:
> <http://www.bhil.com/~kelly/wild2.html>.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

---
> 
>      Ron Baalke wrote:
> 
>           I've added an animation of the Comet Wild 2 flyby
>           images taken by
>           Stardust to the Stardust website.
>           Included is a chart from the Dust Flux Instrument
>           showing
>           the particle impacts on the spacecraft during the
>           flyby, and
>           another chart showing the spacecraft thruster
>           activity:
> 
>           http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/status/040106.html
> 
>           You can view the animation directly from here:
> 
>           http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/images/w2_flyby1.gif
> 
>           Ron Baalke
> 
> 
> 
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Received on Thu 08 Jan 2004 03:33:44 AM PST