Hubble Observes First Confirmed Interstellar Comet (nasa.gov) 50
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their best look yet at an interstellar visitor -- comet 2I/Borisov -- whose speed and trajectory indicate it has come from beyond our solar system. In a press release, the space agency said: This Hubble image, taken on Oct. 12, 2019, is the sharpest view of the comet to date. Hubble reveals a central concentration of dust around the nucleus (which is too small to be seen by Hubble). Comet 2I/Borisov is only the second such interstellar object known to have passed through the solar system. In 2017, the first identified interstellar visitor, an object officially named 'Oumuamua, swung within 24 million miles of the Sun before racing out of the solar system. "Whereas 'Oumuamua appeared to be a rock, Borisov is really active, more like a normal comet. It's a puzzle why these two are so different," said David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), leader of the Hubble team who observed the comet.
Ok Who did it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ok Who did it (Score:4, Insightful)
It says "Posted by msmash" at the top.
That being said, it's the 1st time I ever see a video, or any kind of picture, in a summary. It sucks, it looks like an ad. Bad idea.
Just stop it. If I want to be flooded with graphic content, I'll go scroll on FB.
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I come to slashdot BECAUSE it's all text and NO MEDIA. WTF slashdot? is this the beginning of the end?
Forget the comet (Score:4, Funny)
Cause we all know that the subject of this thread is going to be about the embedded YouTube video.
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Yeah, it's broken on mobile because it's too wide and extends out of the window.
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Trump! Your species is coming to take you back home!
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Does Warren have a plan for dealing with this comet?
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Does Warren have a plan for dealing with this comet?
Of course: Break it up!
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Why would they want him back?
Bugs! (Score:2)
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Why now? (Score:4, Interesting)
We got two of these guys in a very short period of time. That suggest to me that they are likely very common. Why haven't we ever seen them before?
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Because no one was looking for them maybe.
Re: Why now? (Score:2)
People have literally been watching the sky through telescopes every night for 500 years.
I'd say we've been looking for them.
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We have been looking for interstellar comets for 500 years? I learn something new everyday here. I think you are missing the "interstellar" part. These aren't your common comets that we have been able to detect for 500 years.
Re: Why now? (Score:2)
Well, we've been able to detect comets with our own eyes for much longer than 500 years.
Honestly, the reason why these have probably evaded detection for so long is their speed. If you aren't looking in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, you'll miss them. Software has the ability to scan and record and look for changes in far larger swaths of the sky much faster than any human. The broad distribution of the software needed to find this thing is probably the main technical advancement.
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Re: Why now? (Score:2)
The guy in Ukraine found it with an off the shelf telescope.
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Re: Why now? (Score:3)
Doesn't matter, really. It wasn't particularly special equipment that hasn't been around for hundreds of years.
And I'm not at all throwing shade on that guy, or amateur astronomy in any way. He made a much cooler discovery than I likely ever will.
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We got two of these guys in a very short period of time. That suggest to me that they are likely very common.
"Very common" over a period of 14 billion years works out to an average rate of ... ?
Why haven't we ever seen them before?
Perhaps there have been more, but at the outer edge of our solar system. It would be difficult for us to see/track them there. From what I've heard, Space is pretty big and the odds of actually passing through a solar system would be pretty slim.
Re: Why now? (Score:2)
Well, it's obviously too soon to make comments about frequency, but two in two years is pretty high. People have been watching the sky every single night through telescopes since Galileo. These are really the first two ever?
And keep in mind, the first one was found by an amateur with an off-the-shelf scope.
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Well, it's obviously too soon to make comments about frequency, but two in two years is pretty high. People have been watching the sky every single night through telescopes since Galileo. These are really the first two ever?
And keep in mind, the first one was found by an amateur with an off-the-shelf scope.
These are the first two confirmed ever.
Galileo wouldn't have had the concept of "interstellar", because most people thought everything in the heavens orbited the earth. Galileo was a heretic because he, like Copernicus, thought everything orbited the sun.
Kepler's laws might have allowed someone to determine that an object wasn't from this solar system, if they had the ability to take very precise measurements. I don't think the technology to do that existed until the last 100-150 years (at least not in "m
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We got two of these guys in a very short period of time. That suggest to me that they are likely very common. Why haven't we ever seen them before?
Maybe someone just started aiming at us.
Re: Why now? (Score:2)
In one hundred years, the light from our sun reaches a distant world and a voice calls out "Gunner, one quarter click starboard. Fire again."
Re:Why now? (Score:4, Interesting)
The obvious and technical reasons:
- Greater interest and easier access to the technology across broader parts of the world wide population.
- Better, more sensitive optical equipment for amateur (and professional) observers, plus better (digital) resources for data recording and sequential photogrammetry, and readily accessible computational resources and apps permitting orbit calculations. This means greater chance of observing an object, and greater chance of recognizing its origin or significance.
The abstract and social reasons:
We are only recently tuned in to the possibilities of celestial bodies beyond our solar system. The objects are there, but our minds and thinking were not.
- Granted, we have better equipment today than 30-40 years ago, but the basic methods that permit observation of planets around remote stars could have been practiced, and planets discovered, almost any time in the 20th century. It was only after the first discovery (about 25-30 years ago, I forget the exact year), that there was then the impetus to look for more, including the big investment in purpose built satellite telescopes to do the job.
- When Pluto was a planet, we believed it represented the outer perimeter of our neat and tidy solar system. Regardless how you think of its reclassification, as a mere Kuiper Belt object, it makes us respect that there is an Oort cloud and gazillions of objects out there, that interstellar space contains more than just empty space.
- Awareness of interstellar discrete bodies is bolstered by analysis, modelling, and observation of brown dwarfs, galaxy collisions, supernova ejecta, investigations into the nature of dark matter, interstellar gas clouds, more extensive knowledge of comets and their origins, dynamic non-linear modelling of interstellar space weather and orbital mechanics, and so. These are all concepts that were little discussed, observed, or funded 40 years ago, but as one discovery is made, and then two and then more, awareness and interest ramp up, and people start to think more readily about such things.
Planets and comets and debris should behave just like electrons around a nucleus - some bound tightly in their orbits, others free to roam and wander the outer orbitals and inter-stellar or inter-nuclear space, transiently switching their solar or nuclear alliances as they fly by and move on based on their energies and orbital geometries. Objects far out in the Oort cloud, bumped by the gravity of another object or by normal N-body chaotic movement, some will be captured by another star, moving toward it as it moves away form its first tenuous host, then sling around and move on, perhaps to be captured again by yet another star before it can complete one long term orbit around the current host.
Here is a crazy thought:
As common and obvious as these objects are (or should be), we will be so self congratulatory that we made the first discovery in the first place, that future spacefarers will model and recompute the orbit of Oumuamua, even though just one of millions or billions of such objects but nonetheless "our first", and fly there to place a plaque commemorating the event. If lucky, they might even find Elon Musk's roadster and drive it there to place the plaque.
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They have no doubt been "seen" before, but they look just like any other anonymous little speck unless you track them and calculate their orbits. This is not something that is automatically done with every little dot seen in the outer solar system, because it takes effort. We've been far more interested in calculating the orbits of bodies closer to Earth (and the occasional very large KBO).
There are more amateurs with bigger, better telescopes looking at the sky now than ever before, so we're more likely to
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... Why haven't we ever seen them before?
Others have answered already (as more and better equipped amateurs are looking up and some more automated surveys as well), but what I wanted to add is that ESA (European Space Agency) is planning a space probe to be launched and wait for such an object to intercept, usually when spotted it's to late to prepare and launch a new mission.
Unfortunately it's likely too late to catch the previous one (Oumuamua) - the interesting one, there is a proposal (which I hope to be funded), but it's a very long shot (te
and i would like to confirm (Score:5, Insightful)
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Love the stars moving through the video (Score:2)
Puzzling... why? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Whereas 'Oumuamua appeared to be a rock, Borisov is really active, more like a normal comet. It's a puzzle why these two are so different," said David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), leader of the Hubble team who observed the comet.
I don't understand why the expectation would be for different interstellar objects to be similar. Even more so given the sample size of known interstellar objects is now exactly two.
Aliens (Score:2)
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Unless the "comet" is an alien spacecraft that can stop and pick up a hitchhiker then accelerate back to its previous speed using advanced alien technology, hitchhiking on the comet is a much more difficult feat than simply sending out a probe to follow it.
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You know how this would work? If we could first of all get the probe to match the comet's speed so that it won't smash into it and be turned to dust.
Need I go on or does this explain why it doesn't quite work?
Possibly supports theory of panspermia? (Score:2)
We better be able to capture the next one (Score:2)
It is too late for this one, but we better have the technology necessary to capture the next such visitor and place it in orbit around the Earth for proper examination...
Easily puzzled (Score:2)
> It's a puzzle why these two are so different,
'Caaaauuuuuse it's a big ol' universe with lots of stuff in it? That's like being surprised when the next number out of the random number generator is different from the last one.