NEAT Comet Crossing: Internet Telescopes 92
An anonymous reader writes "During a large solar coronal mass ejection, this week's NEAT Comet crossing, gave some spectacular film footage. While no comet with such a small nucleus has ever survived that kind of close solar approach (one-fourth of Mercury's orbit) without fragmenting, this one did-- and is now outward bound on its 370 century roundtrip. These new comet discoveries have filled the log files of the now 70 big robotic telescope projects, most of which are being connected to the internet. The largest ($3 M) research-class one for public use--the Hawaiian Faulkes Project--will see first light in 45 days."
Extra Credit (Score:5, Funny)
Extra credit to the first apache/IIS hacker who points one of these directly at the sun and blows out the camera's retina.
This is old news (just kidding ;-) (Score:4, Funny)
This is obviously old news. Duh ;-).
Does anyone have any theories as to why this comet never tore itself completely apart once it got so close to the sun?
Re:This is old news (just kidding ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
But what do I know from comets?
Re:This is old news (just kidding ;-) (Score:2)
Re:This is old news (just kidding ;-) (Score:1)
Re:This is old news (just kidding ;-) (Score:2)
Re:This is old news (just kidding ;-) (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, why didn't it go POOF! [slashdot.org]
Why this comet never tore itself completely apart (Score:1, Funny)
It passed the sun during the night.
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Rumor has it that the trouble started approximately 5 minutes after a story on the telescope appeared on the website "Slashdot.org", something commonly refered to as "/.ing".
A representative by the name of "CmdrTaco" of slashdot.org said only "No Comment" when asked about issues of liability.....
Re:In other news.... (Score:1, Funny)
CmdrTaco has not floor tickets for Metallica.
Shocking - "reluctant teachers" (Score:5, Interesting)
"Faulkes is currently trying to persuade time-pressed teachers - who are more reluctant than he envisaged - to get involved with the project."
Reluctant teachers are the types who would keep school dull and disconnected from the real world. It is amazing how, even in adulthood, I find myself going back and actually learning things I was supposed to have learned in school. It always comes in the context of a project I may get involved with. Way back in school, when that bit of knowledge was disconnected from any real world application, I found it hard to keep my focus. When that bit of knowledge relates to my life, I find it extremely fascinating.
In the face of such an interesting activity, "reluctant teachers" should be summarily fired.
Re:Shocking - "reluctant teachers" (Score:3, Insightful)
"reluctant teachers" should be summarily fired
after you've fired these teachers and the teachers whose classes didn't meet the testing requirements... well, there aren't any more teachers. oh well.
Tired of duplicates. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Get your math right, please (Score:1)
Re:Tired of duplicates. (Score:2, Funny)
Darwin_Frog isn't the only one with screwed up math. This is from the article!
Re:Tired of duplicates.(failed math?) (Score:2)
I suggest that the next time you try to complain about someone else's math skills, you learn how to use a calculator first.
(i was rather upset to find that RedHat doesn't include the units rpm in the default install I guess they won't do that until someone has a graphical front end for it -- that takes up more space than the units database.)
Let's settle this... (Score:3, Funny)
/* nothing like some K&R C of a Sunday morning, is there? */
main()
{
int n1, n2, n3;
n1 = 370;
n2 = 100;
n3 = n1 * n2;
printf("The answer is %d.\n", n3);
printf("\n-Mark\n");
}
We're all gonna croak. (Score:5, Funny)
For those of you who haven't quite followed along, that was:
Just when scientists think it has barely passed us by, it will hit a tiny speck of dust that will cause it to bounce off and head directly for some big, black asteroid that we can't see in our telescopes. This asteroid will then head directly for Earth. I believe that this asteroid is going to land right on top of Slashdot's server and we're all going to die. Not from the impact--the asteroid will be composed of styrofoam--but from the lack of Slashdot.
I am going to begin building my comet shelter immediately, in which I'll put a big server with lots of hard drives, and I'm going to download and preserve all the knowledge of humankind from the Internet. That means using wget to store all Slashdot comments moderated at -1 or less. This is no laughing matter.
Re:We're all gonna croak. (Score:2, Funny)
just a tad overstated.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. You mean we got lucky enough to see something that hasn't happened even once in the several billion years the Solar System has been around?
I suppose he could have said "we haven't seen anything like this happen before", but that would be so boring in comparison.
hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Speculation on the basis of this shrewd deduction:
"Hmmm, I haven't seen it happen, so it has never happened!"
obNitpicking (Score:2, Interesting)
He misquotes "nothing new under the Sun" as "nothing changes under the Sun". Any terrabiologist worth his salt would quibble with his description of "[the Sun] that makes possible all life on Earth", thinking of undersea volcanic vent ecosystems, and those tiny critters apparently riddling the entire crust. And even basic arithmetic eludes him in
because 93/10 < 13, not > 13. Not to mention that the $10 disposable camera I shoot off at keg parties is covering an enormous field of vision, measureless even in parsecs, accounting for up to 30% of the entire Universe. And the entire distance from the Sun to the Earth can be contained in a 0' arc, when I face the Sun.
At least he didn't speculate on how the comet held together, or I'd be complaining about how the polyacrylates in Krazy Glue have never been detected anywhere but on Earth.
The LEAST the sun could do... (Score:2, Funny)
damn, i missed it. (Score:1)
Of course it survived: it was small (Score:4, Interesting)
While no comet with such a small nucleus has ever survived that kind of close solar approach (one-fourth of Mercury's orbit) without fragmenting, this one did
In astronomy, there is something called the "Roche limit". It is the closest a object can come to another object without being torn apart (by difference in gravitational force between the part closest to the star/planet/whatever, and the part furthest away from it.) The larger the satellite, the larger the difference in force and therefore the larger this limit.
So the answer why such a small nucleus did not get torn apart is easy: because it is so small.
Re:Of course it survived: it was small (Score:3, Informative)
It was well outside the Roche limit (Score:3, Informative)
The Roche limit for non-rotating spherical icy bodies >40 km in diameter approaching the sun is ~1.1 billion meters, and does NOT depend on size. NEAT never got closer than 15 billion meters (according to this article [space.com]). Even if NEAT was much larger than it actually is, it was immune to tidal breakup.
The Astronomy Center, UK (Score:5, Interesting)
For the southern hemisphere (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth pointing out that if you live south of the equator (especially New Zealand, Australia, Southern Africa, parts of South America, etc), you should be able to see the comet within a few days from now after sunset.
It's been approaching the Sun through the northern sky until it swung around to the other side, and now it's moving away in the southern hemisphere skies. It's getting fainter every night, so by the time it's far enough from the Sun to see, it's likely you'll at least need binoculars and have to look quite carefully.
Astrobiology Headlines (Score:1)
It looked like a blink tag inside of some weird schizophrenia tag...makes my head hurt to look at it and try and read it...