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 Comet draws scientific, amateur interest 2 hours, 47 minutes ago
 
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.

The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.

"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."

Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said.

Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomb-like structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.

"What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable," Lewis said. "We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast."

Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last, but estimate it could be weeks — if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.

Wait til' they see what else is in store!

Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly
October 26, 2007, (http://forums.christiansunite.com/index.php?topic=20172.0)

OUGH BOY!
I wondered where that went!
I wanted to put this post with that post...
Sometimes the only find my way back to a post is by luck, :-[
I think i'm getting better though... :)

Comet’s fame keeps growing, and growing ...
Holmes attracts increased interest; celestial show could last for weeks
Nov. 5, 2007

Video of the comet. This link will open in a pop-up for the video player. (http://javascript:msnvDwd('00','d24846fe-8695-4235-b8e0-2d7058e6bf45','us','News_Tech','','msnbc','','21637825','Comet visible to naked eye'))

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, is drawing students to the roof of Nielsen Physics Building for special viewings of Comet 17P/Holmes.

The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter.
Story continues below ↓advertisement

The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.

"This is truly a celestial surprise," Lewis said. "Absolutely amazing."

Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope, but that night it suddenly erupted and expanded.

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet's discovery by Edwin Holmes.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," Lewis said.

Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomblike structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas.

"What comets do when they are near the sun is very unpredictable," Lewis said. "We expect to see a coma cloud and a tail, but this is more like an explosion, and we are seeing the bubble of gas and dust as it expands away from the center of the blast."

Experts aren't sure how long the comet's show will last, but estimate it could be weeks — if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet's details into view, they said.

Comet’s fame keeps growing, and growing ... (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21636369/)

Has anyone thought that the reason we can't see a tail is because it's coming straight @ us? :D
Just a thought, probably not  ;D

I wonder what the comet looks like from the Israeli sky?? If the comet is indeed a sign, it would be very interesting to know what it looks like from Israel.

It's seems like i remember that one of our Brothers or Sisters here @ UC live their?
Maybe they will see this and Reply...
 I would Love to hear about it!!!

I have a friend in Israel, I'm waiting to hear back on the comet. I'll post it here so that y'all know.

Cool ,thank you DW!

NASA pressed to avert catastrophic Deep Impact by Jitendra Joshi
38 minutes ago
 


WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA penny-pinching risks exposing humankind to a planetary catastrophe if a big enough asteroid evades detection and slams into Earth, US lawmakers warned Thursday.

 
But the US space agency said the chances of a new "Near-Earth Object" (NEO) like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs were too remote to divert scarce resources.

Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, said the agency could not do more to detect NEOs "given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with."

Pace and other NASA officials were grilled at a congressional hearing on the existing NEO program, which seized the public imagination in the late 1990s through the movies "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact."

Lawmakers decried the threatened closure of a giant radio telescope in Puerto Rico run with NASA's assistance that is the world's foremost facility for tracking space objects.

"We're talking about minimal expense compared to the cost of having to absorb this type of damage," Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said.

"After all, it may be the entire planet that is destroyed!"

Puerto Rico delegate Luis Fortuno said: "We must take action now to enhance our awareness to prevent a catastrophe."

The National Science Foundation has earmarked the Arecibo Observatory, which featured in science-fiction movie "Contact" and the James Bond installment "Goldeneye," to shut down after 2011 if new private-sector money is not found.

NASA officials said they would get by with new monitoring systems, including a network of four telescopes being built in Hawaii by the US Air Force.

Critics say NASA has imposed big cuts on many research programs in a bid to meet President George W. Bush's goal of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and use it as a stepping stone for manned missions to Mars and beyond.

The hearing of the House of Representatives space and aeronautics subcommittee highlighted one small asteroid named Apophis, about 250 meters (273 yards) wide, which some scientists say could swing by Earth on Friday the 13th, April 2029.

NASA says there is a one in 45,000 chance that Apophis could pass through a "gravitational keyhole" and return to hit the planet in 2036.

"It's a very unlikely situation and one we can drive to zero, probably," said Donald Yeomans, who manages the NEO program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA now only tracks NEOs larger than one kilometer (0.62 miles) in diameter, which come near Earth only once every few hundred thousand years.

Objects of that size can cause global disaster through their immediate surface impact and by triggering rapid climate change.

"Extinction-class" objects measuring at least 10 kilometers, such as the object that crashed into Mexico's Yucatan peninsula about 65 million years ago, would be rarer still.

Lawmakers complained that NASA had failed to come up with a budget in line with a 2005 act of Congress that mandated an expanded search for NEOs that are at least 140 meters in diameter.

The agency's annual NEO budget of 4.1 million dollars was attacked as being too meager to cover this goal.

There are about 20,000 smaller objects with the potential to hit home, according to NASA, and Republican Representative Tom Feeney said "they could still inflict large regional impacts if they struck the Earth."

Options to divert space rocks on collision course with Earth include slamming nuclear missiles into them, although scientists believes that in most cases involving smaller debris, conventional rockets would do the job.

Yeomans said also that while the European and Japanese space agencies are stepping up their own NEO programs, more than 98 percent of the work is now done by NASA.