I’m watching my email for an invitation to fly suddenly to the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps the Latin American Summer School (being held in Argentina this year) needs an emergency strings lecturer? I’ll be happy to reprise my lectures from the one I taught at in Mexico city in 2000…
Why do I want to go South with such urgency? This is largely because Comet McNaught continues to put on a wonderful show in the Southern Hemisphere. Amara Graps has kindly put several links for us to look at in the comment stream of my Look Up Down South post. Have a look here, here, here, here, and here. I did, and I found this lovely shot (by Mary Fanner – click for larger) of the comet over the beautiful city of Cape Town, which I miss a lot from the days when I helped run the ASTI science education program in 2004:
There are several more to be found on the various sites Amara linked to, some that astromcnaught and Matt link to (thanks all of you!) and elsewhere. (Clickable shots below from some of those sites. South Africa (Hanner Pieterse), Perth, Western Australia (TG Tan), and Santa Fe, Argentina (Nicolás Rincón).)
-cvj
Surely this Comet McNaught photo will win a prize!
sorry, left out a word- They applied the comet synchrones _concept_
It’s a good explanation for dust in general. Syndynes and synchrones are explained with some detail here, where, in addition to a comet tail, you can see a similar diagram by Ebherhard Gruen and Mihaly Horanyi about the ‘Dusty Ballerina Skirt of Jupiter”. They applied the comet synchrones to the the dust coupled to Jupiter’s magnetic field. The Jovian dust streamslook like comet tails in some sense, with the Jupiter magnetic field acting like a giant spectrometer, separating the dust particles into particular sizes, although the Jovian streams are more strongly coupled to the magnetic field than is comet dust. Also, the comet particle sizes in that APOD, you should take with a grain of salt (as they say).
There is a great explanation of the picture of the comet’s tail at the Astronomy Picture of the Day for February 1, 2007.
A nice weekend to all,
Stefan
Too many clouds, too much raining these past few days… I can’t see the comet! 🙁
Thanks for posting wonderful pictures.
Christine (from southeast Brazil)
I imagine it will still be quite a sight. Check some of the observing guide links I gave in the previous comet posts. See links to earlier posts at bottom of main post above.
Enjoy! Tell us what you saw when you come back…
-cvj
How much longer will this last? Just curious cause I happen to be hopping over to Australia for a bit tomorrow, will they have a good view over there this weekend?
Perhaps the SoHO people were working on the web site (or it was overloaded with us curious folks!), but the link seems to be working now. Also the links on my previous message to the Sky and Telescope people (“skytonight“) is a growing collection of comet McNaught pictures. As is the Space Weather site (click on the “Comet McNaught Photo Gallery” link). Which means that my original page links which gave more information on the photographer and his photographic conditions are no longer correct… the page links are shifting.
In any case, because the photographers are _so creative_ now, the collection of photos are wonderful places to browse early in the morning or at lunchtime or maybe at night before sleeping… and dream…
Well I suppose if you ask nicely and bribe by promising to tell me cool physics stuff on the plane, I shall acquiesce. 😉
JoAnne… Yeah, why don’t we just spontaneously start a school or workshop in the Southern hemisphere and pop down before the comet fades….? Or we could just follow Yvette to New Zealand… Help her carry her luggage or something. Yvette?
-cvj
Man, can I go South too?
Two more weeks until my study abroad starts in New Zealand! YAAAAY!!! 🙂
Pingback: Tell-Tale Tail - Asymptotia
Wow! Spectacular! Thanks…
-cvj
OMG.
I can’t find words. Amara’s linquistic fountain is blocked. There are no words good enough in any language from any human since the dawn of time to describe the exquisite detail in this STEREO SECCHI HI-1A instrument comet McNaught image.
[Admin insert: Amara’s link above seems to be broken now, but I have put the image it linked to here and in this post. -cvj]
No comet picture has been taken like this, anywhere, anyplace, at anytime.
Do you want to fly through its tail? Are you ready? WHEE!. (there is a larger resolution version too)
There’s more than that came from, at the SOHO Comets Page.
(Please excuse me, I’m more than a little bit giddy…………………..)
Wow,
thank you for posting the pictures!
This foto taken by Hannes Pieterse in Bloemfontein is just amazing!
Does this kind of “shadow” of the trail actually trace the path of the comet in the sky over the last week or so? It somehow looks like the footprints of the comet’s motion along the elliptic orbit around the perihelion…
Just wondering…
And I did not see the comt at all – clouded skys in Germany all the time…
Best, stefan
Why, oh why do you need to keep posting these comet images? It’s been really frustrating sitting near the equator for the past month or so. : (Partially kidding 😉 – I am still frustrated having not seen the comet.
That image with the table-top mt. looks beautiful. Did you check today’s (24/01) APOD? – Cometary tail light.