lovejoy

Four comets in one night

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Earthsky.org, 11/5/13, Deborah Byrd

View larger. | Zlatan Merakov, who is a friend on EarthSky Facebook,  captured these images of four comets visible now in Earth's night sky.  Thank you, Zlatan!

The thing is, on every day of every week of every month of every year since the formation of the solar system, all those billions of years ago, there have been comets drifting around and passing Earth. They are always there, ALWAYS there, out in space. They’re as natural a part of our world as the planets, clouds and kittens. Astronomers who observe the sky don’t get excited about comets because there are so many of the damned things! It’s like a birdspotter getting excited about blackbirds, or thrushes.

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Comet Lovejoy survives boiling brush with Sun, does victory dance

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Csmonitor.com, 6/7/13

 

This was not a tale that should have had a happy ending. When Comet Lovejoy sped into the Sun’s corona in 2011, scientists did not expect the daredevil to survive. Astronomers had already tracked 2,000 similar comets making the same inadvisable trip. None had made it, all melting into the sun’s super-hot glow.

But Lovejoy did live – and it is now telling scientists new tales about our sun.

"It's absolutely astounding," says Karl Battams, of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC, in a press release. "I did not think the comet's icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us."

For more on this story please see Csmonitor.com

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