“Breaking Up Is Not Hard To Do”

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 10:23 AM by Dave

Or, so it would seem for Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. It has now broken into more than 30 pieces. It is going to be approaching its closest point to the Earth from May 12 through May 28 at a distance of 5.5 million miles.

During the expected perihelion, the closest point to the Sun (just inside the Earth’s orbit), on June 6, the comet is expected to disintegrate into 30 additional pieces. During this time the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer infrared space telescope, along with Aricebo and Goldstone radars will closely observe this comet.

Back on March 31, I reported that the comet had only 8 fragments but seemed to be tending towards further fragmentation. Obviously, that seems to be the case.

Astronomers expect to examine this comet closely to discover the cometary break up process and shed some light on why some comets do so.

Please look up Sky & Telescope’s news articles on this comet:
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/comets/article_1704_1.asp

Posted in Astronomy News

One Response to ““Breaking Up Is Not Hard To Do””

1. SCSU Astronomy » Blog Archive » Would You Believe a Million Pieces? wrote on 05/11/06 at 11:50 am :

   [...] In a followup to my previous post on Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3, the latest image from the Spitzer Space Telescope shows innumerable pieces that have broken off from Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3. The Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared telescope meaning it sees infrared light, which has wavelengths just a bit longer than the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum you or I can see with our eyes. Sunlight heats the pieces of the comet, causing them to radiate infrared light, so they can be detected by this telescope. The tails from the pieces trail away from the Sun, showing us the solar direction. [...]