Starship Asterisk*

Comet Halley vs Comet SWAN

Explanation: The pre-dawn hours of May 3rd were moonless as grains of cosmic dust streaked through southern skies above Reunion Island. Swept up as planet Earth plowed through dusty debris streams left behind periodic Comet 1/P Halley, the annual meteor shower is known as the Eta Aquarids. This inspired exposure captures a bright aquarid meteor flashing left to right over a sea of clouds. The meteor streak points back to the shower's radiant in the constellation Aquarius, well above the eastern horizon and off the top of the frame. Known for speed Eta Aquarid meteors move fast, entering the atmosphere at about 66 kilometers per second, visible at altitudes of 100 kilometers or so. Then about 6 light-minutes from Earth, the pale greenish coma and long tail of Comet C/2020 F8 SWAN were not to be left out of the celestial scene, posing above the volcanic peaks left of center. Now in the northern sky's morning twilight near the eastern horizon Comet SWAN has not become as bright as anticipated though. This first time comet made its closest approach to planet Earth only two days ago and reaches perihelion on May 27.

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I saw this image in the Recent Submissions thread here at Starship Asterisk* a couple of days ago and I really loved it!

Ann

The links at the bottom of https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200514.html are broken a bit:

1. The "previous apod" link on the left links to 200512.html. It should link to 200513.html
2. The "Discuss" link links to the previous discussion (http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=200513) instead of this one (http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=200514).

Using Starry Night I have identified some other objects:

• The relatively bright star above the mountail top is the orange giant Beta Ceti with magnitude m = 2.00. Starry Night uses the old name Deneb Kaitos, the standardized IAU name is Diphda.
  
  The reletively bright star at seven o'clock relative to the comet is Iota Ceti (called Deneb Kaitos Shemali according to Wikipedia, no IAU name) with m = 3.53.
  
  The faint smudge at 2 o'clock relative to Beta Ceti is the spiral galaxy NGC 253 in Sculptor; its magnitude is given as m = 8.0.

Just another pretty face! A comet &
a meteor!

If they could race which would win? Meteorite or comet…

Guess it would depend on why they have velocity at all or their relatives.

Thank you.

Fred the Cat wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 4:40 pm If they could race which would win? Meteorite or comet…

Guess it would depend on why they have velocity at all or their relatives.

Wow, Fred, that link of yours that takes us to a news article about a globular cluster being flung at escape velocity our way from the inner parts of giant elliptical galaxy M87 in the Virgo Cluster is really something!!

And to think that M87 must have a binary black hole for this to work is even more amazing! What will happen if the two black holes in M87 merge (if indeed there really are two supermassive black holes in there)???

Ann