[meteorite-list] BREAK! For the love of meteorites, STOP -- COMET 73/P

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun May 14 05:46:24 2006
Message-ID: <32f.3fedf17.31985668_at_aol.com>

Sterling, "Stable Orbit for Millennia for 73P"? Not a snowball's chance in
errr,, the hot box (ref.: baseball play, a.k.a. a rundown in the pickle)! The
similar basic mechanism that delivers meteorites to us has made this a very
"Hot" comet in its recent passes. It has several encounters with Jupiter over
the last 100 years which have probably significantly tagged it out and knocked
its orbit silly, not to mention Earth, too, which hits it when it is nice and
soft. In 1965 it passed just a 0.25 AU from Jupiter and that is a pretty
deadly thing - with accelerations, and that is just one of the large examples.
This comet pile currently has an aphelion of 5.2- AU an itsy bit inside of
Jupiter's (5.2+ AU) orbit, and a perihelion of 0.94 AU just inside Earth's (1.0 AU)
orbit... as we speak it is around 0.05 to 0.06 AU from Earth - so you can see
it isn't too far out of the plane field. Thus the comet's orbit is between
about as close as you can get - or a bit too close- between Earth and Jupiter.
Talk about being between a rock and a hard place...if Comets are "Hairy Stars"
SW-3 is certainly getting its hair pulled...hope that puts it in better
perspective and that one thing doesn't bother you as much now!

I don't think the comet needed to be especially weak, or any specific fault
line, or any of that reasoning. It is just "in-play" at the moment. Another
day in the life of the Solar System. And you're lucky to be in the Stadium
with front row seats. I just looked for component B which is at closest approach
to the Earth. The Full Moon 90 degrees away totally washes it out.

Saludos, Doug

PS According to Japanese calculations it came apart in 1995.
PPS This comet has been know for flare ups in prior apparitions, so again,
nothing suprising, we're just in the right place at the right time and the
camel's back is broken.
Sterling W. wrote:

<< What bothers me about Comet 73P is this: It can't be a
 "new" comet (even though we discovered it in 1930). The orbit
 is too stable for the comet to have recently been thrown in
 there. It's been around for centuries, probably millennia, in
 this same orbit. Yet, it has unraveled so quickly and easily.

Once it started to come apart, sometime between 1990
and 1995,>>
Received on Sun 14 May 2006 05:46:16 AM PDT