[meteorite-list] Sundiving Comet, Juno Photographed

From: Matson, Robert D. <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 13:33:46 -0700
Message-ID: <7C640E28081AEE4B952F008D1E913F170854AA1A_at_0461-its-exmb04.us.saic.com>

Hi Ron,

In addition, within minutes of the sun-diving Kreutz comet's closest
approach
to the sun, a large coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from the sun's
southern
hemisphere in what appears to be about the same direction from which the
comet
came.

Solar scientists have pretty much put to rest the notion that there is
any
mechanism by which one of these tiny sungrazing comets could trigger a
CME.
That said, you would have to agree that the location and timing (CME
starts
at around 15:36 UT on 10 October as seen in the narrow LASCO C2 field of
view) of this latest CME relative to the comet's perihelion is pretty
coincidental.

Two years ago I carried out a statistical analysis of all Kreutz comets
in 2009 (the last year for which sungrazing comet perihelion date
information
was available at that time) against all the CMEs from that year. Here's
what
I found:

# of comets: 142
# of CMEs: 746
Average time between CMEs: 11.71 hours

Of the 142 comets, 57 (40%) had perihelions within +/- 3 hours of a CME,
which is not statistically significant. 26 comets (18%) had perihelions
within +/- 1 hour of a CME -- about what one would expect from random
chance. However, 17 comets (12%) had perihelions within +/- 30 minutes
of a CME. This ~is~ about 5 more comets than one would expect from
chance, but it could still just be a random fluke given the small sample
size. But events like today's do rekindle my interest in trying to
prove one way or the other whether these recurring correlations go
beyond mathematical chance.

--Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Ron
Baalke
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 1:14 PM
To: Meteorite Mailing List
Subject: [meteorite-list] Sundiving Comet, Juno Photographed



Space Weather News for Oct. 10, 2013
http://spaceweather.com

SUNDIVING COMET: A comet is falling into the sun today. Images from the
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show a bright comet rapidly
evaporating as the sun turns up the heat, and it may be only hours away
from complete disintegration. Check http://spaceweather.com for images
of the death plunge.

JUNO PHOTOGRAPHED: Yesterday, NASA's Juno spacecraft buzzed Earth only
347 miles above our planet's surface. Although the spacecraft was very
faint, several amateur astronomers managed to photograph it. Their
images are featured in a special gallery on today's edition of
http://spaceweather.com.

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Received on Thu 10 Oct 2013 04:33:46 PM PDT