[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. ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list Received on Thu 10 Oct 2013 04:33:46 PM PDT |
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