ATLAS flubbed: Comet heading our way takes one look at Earth, self-destructs into house-sized chunks
- Reference: 1588142953
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/29/atlas_comet_shards/
- Source link:
The comet C/2019 Y4, commonly referred to as ATLAS after its discovery by the [1]Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Hawaii, broke off into as many as 30 shards – each one the size of a house – judging from images snapped by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
C/2019 Y4 was first spotted in December last year. Astronomers were excited that the icy rock appeared to be brightening and they expected it to be visible to the naked eye come May 23, when it would have been just 115 million kilometres (71 million miles) away. Unfortunately, the comet began dimming suddenly, and now it’s disintegrating before our eyes.
Where were you in drought season? Interstellar comet 2I/Borisov dumped 230 million litres of water as it whizzed through Solar System [2]READ MORE
Quanzhi Ye, a visiting assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland in the US, is far from disappointed. He believes this will give scientists a rare chance to observe a comet like ATLAS disintegrate.
“This is really exciting – both because such events are super cool to watch and because they do not happen very often. Most comets that fragment are too dim to see. Events at such scale only happen once or twice a decade," he [3]said on Tuesday.
When ATLAS began to dim, scientists had a sneaking suspicion it was fragmenting. Jose de Queiroz, an amateur astronomer, proved them right when his own photographs revealed that ATLAS had broken into three chunks on April 11.
Further observations by the Hubble Space Telescope showed the comet has been falling apart more rapidly. Two images taken on April 20 show 30 fragments, and on April 23, there are 25 pieces swept up in the comet’s tail.
[4]
ATLAS comet fragmenting in April 2020 ... Image Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA), Q. Ye (University of Maryland)
“Their appearance changes substantially between the two days, so much so that it's quite difficult to connect the dots,” said David Jewitt, an astrophysics and astronomy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led a team that took photos of the comet with Hubble.
“I don’t know whether this is because the individual pieces are flashing on and off as they reflect sunlight, acting like twinkling lights on a Christmas tree, or because different fragments appear on different days.”
Astronomers aren’t quite sure why comets break apart. Some believe the nucleus disintegrates as it spins, and the icy material locked in its surface vaporizes.
“Further analysis of the Hubble data might be able to show whether or not this mechanism is responsible,” said Jewitt. “Regardless, it's quite special to get a look with Hubble at this dying comet.” ®
Sponsored: [5]How To Accelerate Brilliant Digital Experiences With Low-Code
[1] https://atlas.fallingstar.com/home.php
[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/28/comet_2i_borisov_water/
[3] https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic2008/
[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/04/28/atlas_comet.jpg
[5] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8552/how-to-accelerate-brilliant-digital-experiences-with-low-code?td=wptl1936
Re: That's not a comet...
We'll know for sure when Red Leader accelerates to attack speed...
Re: That's not a comet...
Not us, all we need to do to cripple earth is to wipe out your supplies of Tea, Coffee, Wine and Beer!
Re: That's not a comet...
Yep, pretty sure this is the mechanism used in Independence Day.
"What the hell is it, a meteor?"
"No sir, no definitely not"
"How do you know?"
"Well sir, it's uh, slowing down"
Nice to see
That taxpayers money has been well spent on Earth's planetary defences.
House-sized chunks? You were lucky! Now you can use the comet ice to make nice cup of tea. Cold tea.
You had cups?
Ay, cups. We 'ad to gather 'orse droppings from t'coalman's 'orse, mould it into cups wi' our bare hands and put by t'fire to harden.
Weren't no fire mind, but we 'ad t'do it anyway.
You had fire?
Yorkshire Tea, of course.
:O might as well say how you make your tea (Which triggers everyone!).
**Sips Twinings Everyday tea** (I get it cheap)
We've had that argument before...
About all we could agree on was that [1]milk in the teapot was an abomination and anyone who thinks otherwise should be carefully examined in padded rooms whilst wearing fetching straight jackets.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/29/milk_in_teapot_debate/
Re: We've had that argument before...
I once encountered milk and sugar in the teapot. Sterilised milk. I didn't go back.
It's a decoy
The real invasion fleet is coming sneakily from behind the sun.
Re: It's a decoy
No, just par for the course.
Just when we think an asteroid might come and make some adjustments to the housing market (by removing large amounts of houses) it just fizzles out into tiny* chunks like a disappointing snowball that dissolves upon impact rather than having a satisfactory thunk from the ice core inside.
* tiny on a cosmic scale.. Also depends upon the measure of a house. Any Register measurements bureau standards for a house?
it fell apart en route
Ah, it's being delivered by Yodel, then...
Semantics
You say "disintegrated", I say "released its payload".
Why is it getting dimmer? I would have thought that more chunks = more surface area = more outgassing = more tail = more brightness.
You just can't get reliable comets these days.
When I were a lad, they were built like... umm... like... err... big lumps of rock, but these modern ones, they just fall apart.
"reliable comets"
It's mostly due to everyone leaving their lights on at night, when we were kids you could see an entire sky full of stars, even the milky way almost every cloudless night. But nowadays there so much light that you can only see the moon and Venus most nights, occasionally a few other objects delivering Internet service. It's hard to even see the meteor storms most years - I haven't see a meteor in 20 years since I spent a few days camping in the middle of nowhere on the Mexican side of Rio Grande.
That's not a comet...
...It's an invasion fleet. They know we've seen them and are now splitting up to flank us.