Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




IRON AND ICE
Pan-STARRS Telescope Finds New Distant Comet
by Staff Writers
Manoa HI (SPX) Jun 20, 2011


Animation showing the comet moving against the background of stars. Images taken at the Pan-STARRS 1 Telescope on the night of June 5-6, 2011. Hawaii time is 10 hours earlier than Universal Time (UT). Credit: Henry Hsieh, PS1SC.

Astronomers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have discovered a new comet that they expect will be visible to the naked eye in early 2013.

Originally found by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Maui, on the night of June 5-6, it was confirmed to be a comet by UH astronomer Richard Wainscoat and graduate student Marco Micheli the following night using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea.

A preliminary orbit computed by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., shows that the comet will come within about 30 million miles (50 million km) of the sun in early 2013, about the same distance as Mercury. The comet will pose no danger to Earth.

Wainscoat said, "The comet has an orbit that is close to parabolic, meaning that this may be the first time it will ever come close to the sun, and that it may never return."

The comet is now about 700 million miles (1.2 billion km) from the sun, placing it beyond the orbit of Jupiter. It is currently too faint to be seen without a telescope with a sensitive electronic detector.

The comet is expected to be brightest in February or March 2013, when it makes its closest approach to the sun. At that time, the comet is expected to be visible low in the western sky after sunset, but the bright twilight sky may make it difficult to view.

Over the next few months, astronomers will continue to study the comet, which will allow better predictions of how bright it will eventually get. Wainscoat and UH astronomer Henry Hsieh cautioned that predicting the brightness of comets is notoriously difficult, with numerous past comets failing to reach their expected brightness.

Making brightness predictions for new comets is difficult because astronomers do not know how much ice they contain. Because sublimation of ice (conversion from solid to gas) is the source of cometary activity and a major contributor to a comet's overall eventual brightness, this means that more accurate brightness predictions will not be possible until the comet becomes more active as it approaches the sun and astronomers get a better idea of how icy it is.

The comet is named C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS). Comets are usually named after their discoverers, but in this case, because a large team, including observers, computer scientists, and astronomers, was involved, the comet is named after the telescope.

C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) most likely originated in the Oort cloud, a cloud of cometlike objects located in the distant outer solar system. It was probably gravitationally disturbed by a distant passing star, sending it on a long journey toward the sun.

Comets like C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) offer astronomers a rare opportunity to look at pristine material left over from the early formation of the solar system.

The comet was found while searching the sky for potentially hazardous asteroids-ones that may someday hit Earth. Software engineer Larry Denneau, with help from Wainscoat and astronomers Robert Jedicke, Mikael Granvik and Tommy Grav, designed software that searches each image taken by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope for moving objects. Denneau, Hsieh and UH astronomer Jan Kleyna also wrote other software that searches the moving objects for comets' tell-tale fuzzy appearance. The comet was identified by this automated software.

The Pan-STARRS 1 telescope has a 1.8-meter-diameter mirror and the largest digital camera in the world (1.4 billion pixels). Each image is almost 3 gigabytes in size, and the camera takes an image approximately every 45 seconds. Each night, the telescope images more than 1,000 square degrees of the night sky.

.


Related Links
Institute for Astronomy University of Hawaii at Manoa
Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








IRON AND ICE
Science Paper Details NASA Epoxi Flyby of Hyper Comet
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 17, 2011
Comet Hartley 2's hyperactive state, as studied by NASA's EPOXI mission, is detailed in a new paper published in this week's issue of the journal Science. After visiting a comet and imaging distant stars for hints of extrasolar planets, you could say the spacecraft used for EPOXI had seen its fair share of celestial wonders. But after about 3.2 billion miles (5.1 billion kilometers) of deep spac ... read more


IRON AND ICE
CMU and Astrobotic Technology Complete Structural Assembly of Lunar Lander

Blood Red Moon Predicted

NASA Releases New Lunar Eclipse Video

The Power of A Moon Rock

IRON AND ICE
Phobos slips past Jupiter

Countering Contamination for Mars Spacesuits

Opportunity Breaks Backward Driving Record

Entry, descent and surface science for 2016 Mars mission

IRON AND ICE
Commercial Spaceflight Federation Supports Use of Space Act Agreements

NASA Reveals New Batch Of Space Program Artifacts

Iran to put a monkey into space: report

Despite budget stress, US space ties strong: NASA

IRON AND ICE
China's second moon orbiter Chang'e-2 goes to outer space

Building harmonious outer space to achieve inclusive development

China's Fengyun-3B satellite goes into official operation

Venezuela, China to launch satellite next year

IRON AND ICE
ESA chief hits at 'anarchy' over space station planning

ATV preparing for fiery destruction

European space freighter poised for suicide plunge

Keeping Cool With Heat Pipes on the Space Station

IRON AND ICE
Arianespace receives the next Ariane 5 for launch in 2011

SpaceX Secures Launch Contract In Major Asian Market

SES-3 Satellite Arrives At Baikonour Launch Base

Shipments Of Sea Launch Zenit-3Sl Hardware Resume On Schedule

IRON AND ICE
A golden age of exoplanet discovery

CoRoT's new detections highlight diversity of exoplanets

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Second Rocky World Makes Kepler-10 a Multi-Planet System

IRON AND ICE
Track24 Defence releases SCC Titan

Raytheon Triples Bandwidth on National Weather Services' Satellite Broadcast Network

European endorsement for space hazards program

Using living cells as an invisibility cloak




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement