9 ms·

NASA, ESA capture comet collision with Sun

71 points by robmaceachern 13y ago

brownbat 13y ago
Look at the light coming off the far side of the sun post-impact. It's almost unbelievable how an object "tens of meters" in diameter can affect an object nearly 1.4 Billion meters in diameter. Just startling. (Note, comets average 20k mph, so we're still talking maybe 2/1000th's of a percent of c, right? It's not like it's a relativistic bomb or anything... yet billions of meters away, a light burst nearly instantaneous upon impact.)
- cokernel 13y ago
  The comet only appears to explode because of a coronal mass ejection. The article attributes the coronal mass ejection to "an explosion on the other side of the star" and suggests that the timing was coincidental. It's unfortunate that the video does not make this clear.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    Wow. I thought the article was downright misleading: Friday, August 23, 2013, 10:31 AM - NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has managed to capture a comet colliding with the sun, **appearing to explode as it approaches.** Upon seeing your comment, I scrolled down and looked a little closer: At approximately the same time, the sun let out a large coronal mass ejection (CME), looking as if the comet triggered the event. In fact, the CME was caused by an explosion on the other side of the star. The icy space body was simply too small to have any impact.
    - biot 13y ago
      Whoever wrote the opening paragraph should have used the word "seeming". While "seeming" and "appearing" are synonyms, the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire article.
      - burntsushi 13y ago
        > the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire article. Indeed. I clicked to watch the video of a comet exploding---not read about it!
serf 13y ago
the headline made me imagine a comet going through a Sun Microsystems building.
Nux 13y ago
Spectacular! Looking forward to see comet Ison!
- joering2 13y ago
  December right? Unless I wasn't paying attention to entire vid, didn't they say that they are not sure if its path will be bend and it will survive sun's rendevouz, or it will be "swallowed" by it. But, if they don't know that, they cannot know if, upon bending/surviving, it won't get on its path with Earth, right? Wouldn't they know already?
  - D9u 13y ago
    The text of the page mentions comet ISON arriving in November.
joshuaheard 13y ago
Sorry, it's not worth watching a 30-second commercial for a 15-second video.
- eksith 13y ago
  Hosts file solves this : http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
  - D9u 13y ago
    Cool... I've never heard of hosts (not a Windows user) but I use AdSuck from Conformal. It's a DNS server that spoofs blacklisted addresses and forwards all other queries, and is useful for blocking ads. I like AdSuck because things like Ad Block Plus don't really block connections the way AdSuck does. https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck
    - johnsoft 13y ago
      Linux and Macs have hosts files too, at /etc/hosts.
      - D9u 13y ago
        Ah... hosts.allow & hosts.deny... I was wondering about that. Thanks for letting me know.
dhughes 13y ago
Is that Saturn in the upper left? I thought it was an icon or some artificial marking it's so stereotypically Saturn shaped I didn't think it was really Saturn.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  I think it's just a bright star. Bright point light sources can bleed over along the line of pixels on CCD imagers producing effects that can sometimes look "saturn-ish".
- adestefan 13y ago
  It's Mercury being lit up by the Sun.
monsterix 13y ago
I think this is second or third such video of a heavenly body colliding with the sun that I have seen. I am a bit curious why the impact from one side of the sun (which is diametrically huge in comparison to the incoming projectile) pushed out a large flare or material on the other side of it? Is sun just a ball of liquid+gases+plasma or there is a hard solid core in the middle of it? For if there was a solid core at all, or even a molten inelastic core, then perhaps the emission on the far side wouldn't have been this big. To me, the the ejecta on the other side is almost equal to the splash on the side the comet hit. Any explanations?
- carbocation 13y ago
  Yes, the article states that (a) it's unlikely that the comet actually hit the sun (it probably burned up beforehand); and (b) there was a mass ejection event on the other side of the sun coincidentally around the same time that this comet was destroyed.
  - monsterix 13y ago
    From the video the comet seems to be headed straight towards the center of sun, and yes the ejection event seems to be strongly related to the event of impact.
    - carbocation 13y ago
      Here's an animated gif (comet is at the bottom right within one of the brighter mass ejection beams, I missed it the first time around): http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24aug13/deadcomet_anim.gif http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24aug13/deadcomet_anim.gi...
    - adestefan 13y ago
      The CME had nothing to do with the object.
astrowilliam 13y ago
I went into a little more detail about this event here, http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same-time-as-coronal-mass-ejection-results-are-explosive-video/3899/ http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same... Basically this sungrazing comet disappears into the sun and the CME happened at the same time. Though it looks like the comet created the CME, it in fact did not. Very cool to see though!
Canada 13y ago
There's a group claiming comets are solid rock and their tails are electrical in nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz7... The video is certainly interesting. Here's a longer one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overv... (I'm no expert on this topic, I don't feel I can judge these claims one way or the other)
teeja 13y ago
Another case of overly dramatic science-journalism. The title says "comet collision". Worse yet just before the video it says "The comet appears to explode upon impact but most likely only made it to within touching distance." Touching distance? This writer clearly does not understand the subject at all. (Or else it's a crappy translation from an ESA item in a foreign language.)
- vecinu 13y ago
  This is The Weather Network's website, where every other week we are subjected to headlines of 'apocalyptic storms' or 'catastrophic weather'. This entire news organization (if it even can be called that) is a terrible weather service, in my opinion. I cannot check the weather casually without noticing some overly exaggerated headline talking about the end of the earth tomorrow. Frankly, I stopped visiting their website.

71 points by robmaceachern 13y ago

Look at the light coming off the far side of the sun post-impact. It's almost unbelievable how an object "tens of meters" in diameter can affect an object nearly 1.4 Billion meters in diameter. Just startling. (Note, comets average 20k mph, so we're still talking maybe 2/1000th's of a percent of c, right? It's not like it's a relativistic bomb or anything... yet billions of meters away, a light burst nearly instantaneous upon impact.)

cokernel 13y ago
The comet only appears to explode because of a coronal mass ejection. The article attributes the coronal mass ejection to "an explosion on the other side of the star" and suggests that the timing was coincidental. It's unfortunate that the video does not make this clear.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  Wow. I thought the article was downright misleading: Friday, August 23, 2013, 10:31 AM - NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has managed to capture a comet colliding with the sun, **appearing to explode as it approaches.** Upon seeing your comment, I scrolled down and looked a little closer: At approximately the same time, the sun let out a large coronal mass ejection (CME), looking as if the comet triggered the event. In fact, the CME was caused by an explosion on the other side of the star. The icy space body was simply too small to have any impact.
  - biot 13y ago
    Whoever wrote the opening paragraph should have used the word "seeming". While "seeming" and "appearing" are synonyms, the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire article.
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      > the ambiguity might confuse those who are unaccustomed to reading the entire article. Indeed. I clicked to watch the video of a comet exploding---not read about it!

serf 13y ago

the headline made me imagine a comet going through a Sun Microsystems building.

Nux 13y ago

Spectacular! Looking forward to see comet Ison!

joering2 13y ago
December right? Unless I wasn't paying attention to entire vid, didn't they say that they are not sure if its path will be bend and it will survive sun's rendevouz, or it will be "swallowed" by it. But, if they don't know that, they cannot know if, upon bending/surviving, it won't get on its path with Earth, right? Wouldn't they know already?
- D9u 13y ago
  The text of the page mentions comet ISON arriving in November.

joshuaheard 13y ago

Sorry, it's not worth watching a 30-second commercial for a 15-second video.

eksith 13y ago
Hosts file solves this : http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
- D9u 13y ago
  Cool... I've never heard of hosts (not a Windows user) but I use AdSuck from Conformal. It's a DNS server that spoofs blacklisted addresses and forwards all other queries, and is useful for blocking ads. I like AdSuck because things like Ad Block Plus don't really block connections the way AdSuck does. https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck
  - johnsoft 13y ago
    Linux and Macs have hosts files too, at /etc/hosts.
    - D9u 13y ago
      Ah... hosts.allow & hosts.deny... I was wondering about that. Thanks for letting me know.

dhughes 13y ago

Is that Saturn in the upper left? I thought it was an icon or some artificial marking it's so stereotypically Saturn shaped I didn't think it was really Saturn.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
I think it's just a bright star. Bright point light sources can bleed over along the line of pixels on CCD imagers producing effects that can sometimes look "saturn-ish".
adestefan 13y ago
It's Mercury being lit up by the Sun.

monsterix 13y ago

I think this is second or third such video of a heavenly body colliding with the sun that I have seen. I am a bit curious why the impact from one side of the sun (which is diametrically huge in comparison to the incoming projectile) pushed out a large flare or material on the other side of it? Is sun just a ball of liquid+gases+plasma or there is a hard solid core in the middle of it? For if there was a solid core at all, or even a molten inelastic core, then perhaps the emission on the far side wouldn't have been this big. To me, the the ejecta on the other side is almost equal to the splash on the side the comet hit. Any explanations?

carbocation 13y ago
Yes, the article states that (a) it's unlikely that the comet actually hit the sun (it probably burned up beforehand); and (b) there was a mass ejection event on the other side of the sun coincidentally around the same time that this comet was destroyed.
- monsterix 13y ago
  From the video the comet seems to be headed straight towards the center of sun, and yes the ejection event seems to be strongly related to the event of impact.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    Here's an animated gif (comet is at the bottom right within one of the brighter mass ejection beams, I missed it the first time around): http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24aug13/deadcomet_anim.gif http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24aug13/deadcomet_anim.gi...
  - adestefan 13y ago
    The CME had nothing to do with the object.

astrowilliam 13y ago

I went into a little more detail about this event here, http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same-time-as-coronal-mass-ejection-results-are-explosive-video/3899/ http://spaceindustrynews.com/30-meter-comet-hits-sun-at-same... Basically this sungrazing comet disappears into the sun and the CME happened at the same time. Though it looks like the comet created the CME, it in fact did not. Very cool to see though!

Canada 13y ago

There's a group claiming comets are solid rock and their tails are electrical in nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn_HqbMmn-4&list=FLvHqXK_Hz7... The video is certainly interesting. Here's a longer one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&feature=c4-overv... (I'm no expert on this topic, I don't feel I can judge these claims one way or the other)

teeja 13y ago

Another case of overly dramatic science-journalism. The title says "comet collision". Worse yet just before the video it says "The comet appears to explode upon impact but most likely only made it to within touching distance." Touching distance? This writer clearly does not understand the subject at all. (Or else it's a crappy translation from an ESA item in a foreign language.)

vecinu 13y ago
This is The Weather Network's website, where every other week we are subjected to headlines of 'apocalyptic storms' or 'catastrophic weather'. This entire news organization (if it even can be called that) is a terrible weather service, in my opinion. I cannot check the weather casually without noticing some overly exaggerated headline talking about the end of the earth tomorrow. Frankly, I stopped visiting their website.