Comet Kudo-Fujikawa Reaches Perihelion

MagnetarJones writes "Cruising through the inner Solar System, new Comet Kudo-Fujikawa reached perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, yesterday, January 29. Passing within 28.4 million kilometers of the Sun, this comet came much closer than innermost planet Mercury. The space-based SOHO observatory captured these views of the comet as it neared perihelion by using a coronograph's occulting disk to block the overwhelming sunlight. Though fading on its outbound journey, Kudo-Fujikawa should soon be visible to southern hemisphere comet-watchers in February's evening skies."

"Alert, alert. Collision imminent."

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

Does anyone remember the game K240: Utopia 2? Oh, comets would be so much more interesting if we lived in the Martian asteroid belt.

"Alright, Slashdot's discovered a new comet! I'm taking the lift to the top of the Resiblock to get a good look at it."

"Yeah, I heard. I feel sorry for the folks on AST:JRS-334, though - according to one of these comments, that comet's gonna smack right into them in about two minutes."

"Naw, that's gotta be a troll. What kind of-- wait, what asteroid do we live on again?"

Sexy computer voice: "Alert, alert. Collision imminent."

"Aw, crap."

Nice MPEG's

[missing000]

Especially this [nasa.gov] one. The solar flares are awesome.

Another link

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Something I saw yesterday on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site [nasa.gov]. Same thing and it has an explanation about it and such.

The APoD site is pretty cool, the day before [nasa.gov] they had an awesome picture of the Horsehead Nebula

Re:Another link

[MagnetarJones]

Yea thats where I found it, forgot to add that link. I visit APOD every day (or thereabouts)

Holy quote-appropriating, Batman!

[Single GNU Theory]

It's nice to see that the entire explanatory text of yesterday's APoD [nasa.gov] made it in to the Slashdot article.

Unless MagnetarJones is one of APoD's authors, though, you should give credit where credit is due.

Re:Holy quote-appropriating, Batman!

[Single GNU Theory]

D'oh! I wouldn't have been redundant if a user hadn't interrupted my important work posting to Slashdot.

I'll fix that user, though. I'm setting his password to expire every day.

huh?

[gurensan]

Was that an occulting disk or an occluding disk? Sometimes it's hard to tell them apart, you know, just by looking at them, and all the naked savages dancing around one of them ;)

comet, eh?

[C21]

in other recent comet news, too bad this project, http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021214-12002 0-6133r ,got canceled, http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030115/12/dj88i.html

UFO!

[Bob Vila's Hammer]

The space-based SOHO observatory captured these views of the comet [20m.com] as it neared perihelion by using a coronograph's occulting disk to block the overwhelming sunlight.

Re:UFO!

[Bob Vila's Hammer]

Actually, the above was a joke - if you look at the link.