Transcript:
oh yeah that's that would be nice that were you know I have really kind of minimal commitments I haven't been on a
vacation like way too long well yeah yeah it's nice when you don't have
to go somewhere and do something you're on your own schedule I new yeah hey did
you see the eclipse uh Terry did you see the partial yes what did you think actually
did you know I S I sat there for a minute and thought okay yes it is getting darker you know it was so small
but yeah yeah it was you know when one thing that was interesting to me was the
uh I was trying to see how far in advance I could see the penumbra you know would it be 20 minutes would it be
30 minutes and I was able to see the pen number 45 minutes before and 40 just
about 45 after and um during the partial
it I think it looked a little more eclipsed than it was because part of the
penumbra was dark enough to take a little bit of a bite too that was just my impression I don't know
what it was pretty cool the same way though it looked like it took a little more of a bite to me too and I thought
maybe it was just my imagination or my eyes but it looked like more than I was expecting yeah I think the penumbra
played a role and so I'm going to kind of keep an eye on the penumbra I've become a penumbra follower since that EC
I've actually taken a flight an airline flight to see up a number eclipse of the
moon from the airplane oh yeah I'm the only person who's ever done that but how
was it what what did you see DAV it was uh one of it was an eclipse that took place just two weeks before a total
about 20 years ago and uh it was uh the
penumbral Eclipse was just kind of east of Tucson so I got on the plane made
sure I had a seat on the right side where I'd be able to see the morning and I saw the eclipse it was a total
penumbral Eclipse Terry would you mind if I did the quotation now so I could go to my other meeting and then come back
let me um Scott are we let yeah we're we're live right now so I
can get us started do that and if he's there yep here we go all right
[Music]
today we're going to cook a comet for this recipe you'll need one Comet as
large as you can find make sure it's nicely layered with ice and various other Frozen
compounds set it on track to head past our sun and slowly turn the heat up as it
approaches cook the outer layer of the comet in the sun's radiation the material on the comet surface will go
directly from solid to gas we call this process sublimation the process of sublimation
will help transfer the sun's energy away from the comet's crust keeping it cool sublimate the water ice into water
vapor this will release trap dust to Trail off the comet notice how the comet
forms a tail add ultraviolet light to the dust this will help make our Comet bright the
more dust our comet has the brighter it will appear allow the vapor to escape to the
comet's crust these Jets May slightly jostle it or cause it to
rotate your Comet will not cook evenly the side facing the sun will sublimate
faster than the other side bring the comet closer to the Sun and the tail will disappear materials are sublimating
so quickly now the vapors exist just long enough to appear on the surface the
Sun's gravity will deform the comet into an oblong shape observe what materials continue to
sublimate this will give you clues about the comet's composition density and mass
hopefully your comet is strong enough not to fall apart if it survives the Sun's gravity and radiation maybe one
day it will visit us again
well hello everyone this is Scott Roberts and Terry man and we are back with h a special edition of the
astronomical League live program Terry I'll let you take it away from here all
right thank you Scott we have a great light up tonight what I would like to do is go right to David Levy and let him
start us off for the evening deid well thank you very much I'm gonna have to go
to another meeting but I'm only going to be at that other meeting briefly because I don't want to miss very much of Bob's
presentation I'm really looking forward to that and thank you Bob for giving us the time for this
astronomically special event my quotation is because last week I was at
palar for the first time in over 30 years and I saw our lovely 18inch in the
visitor center but my quote that we also saw the lunar eclipse which was really spectacular I
thought far more than I ever thought it would be and so in honor of that I'm going to quote Thomas Hardy's 1903
poem at a lunar eclipse the by Shadow Earth from Pole to
Central sea now steals along the moon's Meek shine an even monochrome and
curving line of imperturbable Serenity how shall I link such Suncast
symmetry with the torn troubled form I know as fine that profile plaed as a
brown Divine with continence of moil and misery and canop intense immense
mortality but throw so smallish shade and Heaven's High human scheme be hemmed
within the coasts yon Arch implies is such the Stellar g gauge of
Earthly show Nation at war with nation reins the team Heroes and women fairer
than the SK thank you and back to
you you're muted there Terry we will let you go I know you have
another meeting to get to right away so hurry back and we will probably still be
here thank you all right if it doesn't matter to Chuck and Carol I'm going to
go straight to Bob because I know Bob also has another meeting he has to get to but Bob I so appreciate you doing
this tonight on such short notice thank you very much Terry I appreciate it and uh as I mentioned a
few minutes earlier to you I am a soft touch when it comes to comments so so do
you want me to begin we sure appreciate it uh yes this comet is certainly uh the
most exciting thing it's on the tongues of all of us everyone's talking about kamet chuchin Shan Atlas uh this I used
to keep a list of how many comments that I observed and I stopped listing them at around 400 and I don't know how many
I've seen at this point but that's how crazy I am about following comments I really really enjoy them including uh uh
D Ley David Livy's comets too so with that little bit of an introduction let's go right to our slides our presentation
about the comet I'll share my screen and we will
begin soon as I can find my slide button there we go is that clear for you guys
can you see it yes looks like we're good so this is a very recent picture it's taken by doo in Mexico and it was is
just photographed yesterday or actually today is the 25th this morning and this is a
truly unique image first of all the comet looks very impressive this at the
moment when he photographed this the comet was about magnitude three so he
has a darker Sky than we have at dawn to see this Comet so it stands out a little bit better but what's amazing to me is
it was taken with a drone so there are multiple images here done with the Drone and then stacked and of course when you
stack multiple images you get a very bright prominent comic but look at that scene there with the clouds so I call
this high hopes for comu Sean and in parenthesis I have approximately how you
pronounce it I got tired of mumbling the words or calling it by its other name
which is C 2023 A3 so I decided let's just try to pronounce it in Chinese so
chuchin Shan so we're going to talk about this wonderful Comet this evening
and first besides that picture I've got some other recent images to show you this was taken by Paulo RIS on September
23rd from Brazil this is just to kind of wet your appetite and build excitement here but here you could see it's
starting to look like a genuine the real article in the sky where you have a
prominent bright tail and a coma All The Observers so far and all of our
observations so far have been from the southern hemisphere and virtually everyone who has observed it thus far
has said that it has a very dense bright coma but an ex and and a longish tail
several degrees long but that visually at magnitude three and competing with
Twilight it's a rather faint object but easily visible in binoculars that will
change very quickly here is a closeup another one by Doo taken on the 24th of September where
you can see beautiful dust tail within this picture there's also a gas tail
commas typically have both uh but the gas tail is a little too faint to see yet in the Twilight Sky and it also uh
in at least one image I've seen it overlaps the dust tail so it's a bit difficult to separate them out this is
one of my very favorites it was taken by Don Pettit this is an animation that he
made multiple images of kuchin Chan Atlas coming up Rising right through the
air glow isn't that intense that is cool isn't that just the coolest thing and he
has continued to photograph it there are new images of the Comet too that I've been taken but I really enjoyed this
because you can see it rise into the sky gorgeous you know no light pollution up
there that's a dark sky but this is a very recent image now
I mentioned that most people have been seeing the combat from the southern hemisphere because that's where it's
presently highest up in the dawn sky but just today uh Peter horik produced an
image of the Comet he went out this morning and he stacked a bunch of images he lives in
Czechoslovakia and at 49.8 degrees north latitude so we're talking US and Canada
latitudes he described the comet at magnitude 3 said it was not visible at
all with the naked eye that's this morning but that it was faintly visible in binoculars and here you can see it
and it does look very delicate doesn't it right down there you can see the faint tail and then here is the coma so
it is visible now at our latitude and will be for the next few days I'll go into that that a little bit more in a
minute uh but it's probably for us for most of the time it's of its visibility
in the morning Sky it's probably going to be mostly a binocular object love to be proved wrong though maybe it'll shoot
up to second or first magnitude before it dips back towards the
sun this is or will be hopefully cross our fingers it doesn't break up you know
when it approaches the Sun at parah helian and September 27th and feels the greatest heat and gravitational tug from
the Sun hopefully it will not break up if it doesn't it should be an equal to
commet neol lives although it will be visible throughout its best part of The
Apparition uh low in the morning sky right now and then after parah helion it
will pop into the evening sky and it will be brightest when it's closest to
the Sun in the evening sky so it's a little bit tighter closer to the Sun than Comet neowise was back in the year
2020 but magnitude wise it should be approximately the same right around zero
perhaps minus one if we're lucky just to do a littleit bit of background about comets we see that
gorgeous tail that's what we normally think of as a comet bright head gorgeous tail it all comes down every Comet comes
down to a very small icy body that is embedded with dust particles silicates
organic compounds but it's embedded within the ice and these small irregular bodies very much resemble potatoes from
your garden if you've ever planted potatoes and gone searching for them uh you'll pop
objects that very much resemble comets including being kind of dark skinned the way comets are so these are spacecraft
images they're small they're typically about 1 to 10 kilometers across this
particular Comet chuch chinchan Atlas is about 2 kilometers across to our best
knowledge as a comet approaches the Sun the ice that makes up the comet and it's
usually primarily water ice but not necessarily it can have all kinds of ices involved carbon dioxide ice dry ice
basically carbon monoxide ice methane and so forth so it's kind of a mish mash
of Isis but primarily water uh as it approaches the Sun the solar radiation
vaporizes that ice and within it is trapped dust and the radiation pressure
which is actually the physical momentum of the photons leaving the sun they
actually push the dust particles back away from the head of the Comet from the
nucleus and they create the dust tail so those are the small particles and those
bits of dust liberated from the comet are illuminated by the Sun and they glow
kind of a pale yellow color the solar wind meantime which is the steady wind
of subatomic particles that the sun is blasting out every day the solar wind
energizes cometary gases in particular particular carbon
monoxide uh the UV light from the sun I should say energizes carbon monoxide and
causes it to glow blue so you get a second tail which is blue colored again
primarily uh Co carbon monoxide and then the wind itself the solar wind blows
that gas directly behind the comet opposite the Sun so it's stretching and
shaping the gases that are leading the comet and those are ionized gases they're ionized by the Sun's UV light
and so the solar wind and the direction of the magnetic field that accompanies the solar wind controls what happens
with the ion or the plasma tail that blue tail if the solar wind direction
changes that tail can be snapped off and another one will grow right in its
place one of my favorite comets one of the ones that really got me interested in comment this is 67p chirima Gasco
here you see it in an image taken by the Rosetta probe which hung around and orbited the comet between 2014 and 2016
all those other images were flybys this was were sticking around and then they finally actually landed The Craft on the
comet when the mission was over but you can see the irregular shape you could you can really get a sense of the sun
drilling into and vaporizing called subliming but vaporizing works too
vaporizing pockets of ice across the comic and shaping it through the vaporization of ice and the dust is
being blasted out through those Jets this is an awesome image of a single jet
in action as the Rosetta probe passed directly over it so you can see right
here this spot on the comet surface which actually turns out to be a cavity
in the comet surface yes the icy surface vaporizes like you saw the video before
this program but there are cavities that lead to Subterranean depths in comets
and fresh ice beneath the surface of the combat vaporizes and blasts out through
these cavities into space as Jets and carrying dust which helps create the
tail another favorite image taken by Rosetta it's a sequence there's a few cosmic rays running through here but
it's mostly dust that you see some of that dust goes out into space some of it lands back on the
surface Comet environments are just unbelievably active I I just someday I
wish I somebody could create a virtual reality experience of being on one
because of all of the cliffs and boulders things get under mind you know as the sun heats them and the ice
vaporizes things just collapse a jet could form underneath a boulder it blast
the boulder up from the comet's surface or undermine the Boulder and cause it to roll downhill so it's an unbeliev it's
like a morphological Madness over place a commet surface when it approaches the sun in all of this activity in the case
of this Comet 67p it lost like about three feet of its surface that's what it
loses every orbit that's what vaporizes ARR here's a nice image uh taken hours
apart two different images put together so you can get a sense of the landscape of this comet look at that talk about
forbidding I don't care I still want to be there so let's get right to our Comet
again you got a nice taste of what it currently looks like based on images taken primarily from the southern
hemisphere but one from Czechoslovakia this Comet was discovered
by um back in January of 2023 at the Purple Mountain Observatory
in China and it was named chuch well the name chuchin Chan actually means purple
mountains So when you say that word you're saying Purple Mountain so we can call it purple mountain Atlas too as the
name of the comic was also independently discovered by the atlas project now when
it was first found it was just like a blip and it was reported as an asteroid magnitude
1819 and it went unconfirmed so it was basically lost but
the atlas project which is a survey looking for any moving object in the sky that that could potentially pose a
hazard for the Earth was r discovered by Atlas and then they were able to find archival images and determine no no no
uh this is not an asteroid this is actually a comet because they saw a very tiny dense coma in additional images
made of chuchin Chan Atlas and that's why it has two names of course uh orbit
determination uh found that our Comet our featured Comet originates in the ort
Cloud one of uh one of my favorite places too I like refrigerated areas that's why I live in duth Minnesota it's
like living in the ort Cloud compared to Miami for instance it's a giant Comet repository it's just this area of all
these little bits and pieces of ice and dust that were never incorporated into the planets or asteroids of the inner
solar system it's just sitting out there and an unbelievable distance one and a half trillion kilometers away and more
this Comet dropped in from the or Cloud which means it has been traveling
towards the inner solar system for millions of years and how fortunate that
we happen to be alive and around to enjoy its arrival here's a view of the
or Cloud where it's located still blows me away how far it is it's actually beyond the sun's influence in terms of
its physical or radiational influence I guess you could say it's beyond the
heliosphere and it it's located in interstellar space but it's still
gravitationally bound to the Sun here's a view of the Comets orbit like a
lot of cloud or comets from the or Cloud they come in at every different direction right which is the reason we
think the or cloud is a sphere in the first place so this comet has an orbit
that is inclined 139° and it is currently below the plane
of the solar system working its way up this is its position right now today on the 25th here it will come up swing near
Earth and then head North above the plane of the solar system just to give you an idea of the
general track now we had to wait like a year before we could see kamach chuch chinhan
Atlas in a telescope I spotted it myself for the first time at a very cold January morning here in Minnesota uh it
was about 13 and a half magnitude but even then I was excited to see it
because the coma the inner coma the head of the Comet it was so intensely bright
for being such a faint object I took that as a good sign that this thing had some lasting power and as it turned out
it apparently does because it's still with us and the forecast is still good uh gradually as the comet
approached the Earth it and the sun it grew a longer tail took on this most
beautiful shape I hope some of you got to see the comet back in spring when it was approximately 10th magnitude and it
exactly have this teardrop shape this teardrop shape is typical of comets that
are very rich in dust and have large dust particles that is going to turn out
to be a really good thing for us I made a sketch of it in my scope this is with a 15 inch
142x and you can see it looks just like the photograph you very bright coma in
there of course the nucleus itself the comet body is not visible shrouded in the dust that it's producing it's the
Sun is working it over the comet gradually approached the
Sun and moved Westward and slipped away from View and it was out of view
beginning in early August and we were all like what's going on with the comet so it was viewed for a time in various
spacecraft like the Soho spacecraft that orbits the earth and studies the Sun so
we did get some views of it but then everybody was really ramped up on September 11th when Terry Lovejoy yes
Terry Lovejoy a comet Discoverer himself six comets for this guy he discovered
readus recovered the comet on the 11th and you can you can Terry worked hard
because there it is at dawn from Australia it was only 14 degrees
elongation from the Sun that is this is an amazing image to me even though it
doesn't look like much on the surface so as I mentioned at the beginning a aian
Brazilian South American observers have all been watching this Comet for the past week it's been gradually Rising
it's been brightening as it approaches the sun it's finally getting to a
declination where it is becoming visible in our sky in the midn northern
latitudes this is a sky and Telescope chart showing you the approximate location of the Comet down below the
star regulus very low above the Southeastern Horizon it about an hour before Sunrise
is a good time to go out and look so it will be visible again some people have
already spotted it there's a guy in Texas that took a picture you saw the Czechoslovakian image but from Minnesota
at least um I calculated it's going to be visible from the 26th through the
30th just a brief jump up and then it's gone so these next few
nights are the time time for all of us wherever you live in the United States in Canada to make that attempt to see it
in the morning Sky it's very low down in Twilight uh directly below regulus it
should reach magnitude two or thereabouts right now it's at 3.0
approximately and you can use the moon here's the good news you can use the moon on the 29th and 30th with regulus
to kind of Swing you down there to see the comet plus you get to see this aome thin Moon and that I just you know
that's enough for me even if I don't see the comic I'm planning on going out tomorrow as I look out my window it's
still clear so I've got my fingers crossed so the old Moon helps the way you need a great eastern Horizon you may
only have 15 minutes or something the comet may only be about three or four
degrees high at maximum for you so be sure you got yourself a good Horizon in that direction and a giant fan to blow
away all the clouds that are hanging out in that direction some days those who have studied comets and
who enjoy watching them know that some like people some are gassier than others so for instance we have this Comet you
might recall the green Comet of the winter of 2023 very gas-rich Comet uh
the color green that you see which is even visible to the eye when you look at a comet through a telescope it's quite
Vivid sometimes this is produced by the emission of datomic carbon C2 that is
the visible light emission of Green from a comet and if you see a lot of green in a comet it's a gassy Comet kuch chinan
Atlas is different it is not so gassy it is primarily a Dusty Comet and again
that's a fortunate thing for us because bind particles like cigarett smoke water
vapor and dust are fantastic that forward scattering light
as you can see in these two images we have the light source is behind this guy's head and here he's breathing out
and you've all seen this in the winter where the breath someone's breath is just brilliantly white and it's because
the light from the source that's hidden and nearly in line with your line of sight is being forward scattered off
those bits of moisture the same for the same reason we can see these plumes on
Enceladus Enceladus pardon me because they're backlit that's another way of calling this it's backlit by the Sun the
more backlit the brighter the plumes the brighter the breath and believe it or not just today when I was coming in
after walk in the woods I noticed one of these dandelion seed heads in my yard
and I thought oh look at that that thing is forward scattered in a massive way so I took a picture of it in the sun's
Direction look at how bright it is is and then I held it off to the side still
kind of bright but it lacks that Brilliance it's not forward scattering the light so forward scattering if you
got a grasp of the concept now I hope you do is related to the comet's phase
angle which is our line of sight towards the comet in relation to the
sun so as the phase angle of a comet increases in other words as it moves
more directly into the line of sight of the light source which is the sun the
more intense the forward scattering becomes and the brighter the comet
becomes and if you got a Dusty Comet like this and it has a it's going it's
it's going to have a high phase angle then the potential for a ramp up in
magnitude is great so c22 there it is I did use that term C 2023 a3's phase
angle you can see on the diagram on right how phase angle works it increases
now through early October as the comet gradually comes into alignment with the
sun and it it will rapidly brighten and here's how much is going to brighten
these numbers come from a comet researcher Joseph Marcus and they were published some of these were published
on a CET 5445 and what we have here are the dates universal time
here's the comet's um phase angle okay you notice that it's increasing reaches
a peak of 173 degrees which is almost 180 and then it begins to
decrease this is the comet's base magnitude without any forward scattering
factored in so at best this might just be a second magnitude Comet not bad but
look what happens when we add the phase angle addition the comet gets quite
these are the additional brightness mag this is how much brighter the comet gets just due to forward scattering and as
you see that affects the final magnitude what we'll actually see with our eyes on
the column at the far right I hope you could see that here in this and you'll notice that the comet is going to be a
lot brighter than at first glance so we're going to look at first as it
passes perahan what we might see and then when it flips over after parah
helion into the evening sky so we have a comet that is a Dusty Comet it's ideally
placed to get a significant brightness Boost from forward scattering that means
that careful observers as you notice from the negative magnitudes on the table I just showed you careful
observers may be able to see the comet in the daytime sky at around magnitude minus two perhaps as
bright as Jupiter it's going to be near the Sun so you're going to have to be super careful to keep the Sun out of the
view you might be able to use a roof line totally block the Sun and then a pair of binoculars see if you can spot
it you probably won't see a tail but you might see the bright head of the Comet
and this is how it moves across the daytime sky as it's headed towards the
evening and dust sky some of you may have seen and I bet uh
David has Comet MCN this Comet was also super Dusty and it was in a great
position so that forward scattering boosted its magnitude and it was visible in broad daylight I remember looking at
this thing in my telescope just for my front yard you could see the coma and a little bit of flaring from it no problem
at all magnitude of this though was minus 5.5 so uh significantly brighter
than we would expect chuch chinan Atlas to become I'm still counting on it
hopeful so as you look at this uh illustration this sort of uh simulation
of the comet on the right is its visibility its position in the daytime morning or in the morning sky and then
watch how quickly it brightens as it passes in the direction of the sun like that
dandelion and then it flips over into the evening sky and gradually begins to
fade but it will have a long tail we're expecting a tail of about 10 to 15
degrees there'll be an ion tail and a dust tail so this is the comet again on
the right in the morning sky and then it's switches moves past the Sun at parah helion and then into the evening
sky so while we can go out in the morning Sky to see the comet uh Twilight Really
interf fears with it a great deal the best part of The Apparition when things get rolling and the comet returns to
view and then stays with us all through the fall that begins about October the
12th we have not only the high forward scatter when it first comes into the sky
down here on the 12th but it will have passed just past parelia which means the
sun will have just raked it over the coal so to speak so that it will have
ejected as much dust as it can when comets are close to the Sun they can really kick out a lot of extra dust so
circumstances are ideal past barelan and then it comes closest to the earth so we
should see a pretty bright Comet around perhaps as bright as serious when it first appears in the sky so it should
make an unbelievably wonderful thing as long as it doesn't break up at parah helion I'm told that at 2 kilometers
across it probably will survive it's surv RVE to this point but you can see here the green numbers are the
magnitudes that we expect along the path and that's a long time isn't it that's
that's several weeks of a comet being visible with the naked eye in a dark sky and certainly visible in a par oculars
so I think there are lots of public opportunities for us to get out and share this Comet with people identify a
great place with a western exposure unobstructed View and get those telescopes out and get people to see the
comet we do have a moon of course naturally this being amateur astronomy the moon will always interfere when you
least want it to so we have some Moon interference occurring between the 15th and the 20th but there's lots of time on
either side R viewing the comment at its best I always recommend the stargazing
app for people and if you're looking for one uh to recommend the people stellarium mobile which is free it's on
Google Play and the Apple Store super easy to use tap the time here and you
tap up at the top on the magnifying glass the search function you type in C
2023 A3 boom it has the comet and it will show it to you just like I've got
it right here and then you can hold it up to the sky your phone and locate it that way too binoculars I like to always
emphasize that having a pair of binoculars with you always enhances a comet it really makes them extra
beautiful you see so much more detail in the tail um and you see more color too
sometimes especially in that pale blue ion tail I recently bought a sea star
and discovered that it was an excellent instrument for photographing the comet
this was taken back on June 1st and Comet was 10th magnitude at this time so if you have a sea star this would be a
great chance to set it up and see what you can get you might have a telescope here where you're doing some observing
just let the sea star do its thing and then if you've got people around you could show them on the phone the image
and then say hey come take a look through the telescope too now that you know what to look for couple more images this was taken a
little bit ago about a week ago September 17th at dawn reached magnitude 4.3 of course now it's brighter
3.0 here's a view from September 17th from Namibia and here you can see Two Tales
on the comet uh there are actually three but we can't see the ion tail because of
the bright sky this dust tail is a recent one that is composed of
exceedingly tiny grains that have been fluffed away liberated just recently in
the past month so it's kind of a new tail uh that formed on the comet as it's
closing in on the sun and the larger particles are breaking up into smaller ones you have these very tiny grains
that's what you're seeing at all of the pictures pictures tonight it also has sort of like a shadow type tail here the
these this tail is actually the grains of dust the larger ones that were
deposited along the comet's orbital path during the Spring months and they form
what we call an anti-il so this Comet not only has an
ion and a dust tail but because of orbital geometry it will have uh it
should have a tactive their anti- tail perhaps as good a tail as we saw back in
1957 with Comet Aaron rolet take a look at this simulation
again and you will see the anti-il form not here but watch as it swings by the Sun the anti tail will appear to stick
out opposite the head of the Comet there comes there's
the on the right there's the anti tale right here kind of faint but maybe you
caught it right there so dust ion and anti-il couldn't ask for more probably
maybe a sodium tail who knows the best time to see the anti tail is when the
earth H lines up along the comet's orbital plane this is a bit tricky to
show you're looking down on the solar system the Earth is off to the right we are looking toward upward towards the
comet's orbit we are in the plane of the orbit way behind it so there are no meteors or anything coming from this
common but we're looking across the orbital plane so all that dust that was
fluffed off uh spalled off during parelia that dust will be seen behind or
below the head of the Comet as an anti-il and again as I mentioned earlier it might look something like Comet Aaron
Rollin did in 1957 another thing to watch for this is
the first photo I've seen of this occasionally you'll see this is sort of rare you'll see a bifurcation of the
tail where it looks like there's a a shadow people sometimes call it the shadow of the nucleus of the Comet and
you can see it here in this Gerald Raymond image taken on the 25th look there's little obuity here just a little
gap between one half and the other half of the tail right down there uh it looks
like the shadow of a nucleus but it's actually that's not what happening what's happening is this
looks kind of crazy but stay with me this is sort of a well it's a water it's
a fountain right it's a decorative Fountain and what it is is it serves as a wonderful model for the comet's
nucleus here's the nucleus down below where the water's coming up we have the sun here heating the nucleus those are
the Jets shooting out their dust is coming wrapping around the comet and
streaming down the tail and so when we look at this with the water and with
Comet dust you see that over here on the left and on the right more streams are
aligned so it looks like the comet is brighter it gives it actually comet's tail is tube shaped if you can see this
as a long tube and we see it brighter on the sides because we're looking through
more dust around the curvature of the tail on the sides so it's not actually a shadow but it's a fascinating phenomenon
that we can see with some comets usually the brightest and this comet is already showing it so this is my final slide and
it shows my hopes and dreams I'm sure it won't look like this but comic MCN was a
wonderful bright comic very bright very dusty but who knows and that's what's so
great about comments we just don't know they're kind of like people they just do these unex expected surprising things
they're a bit predictable but not always so potentially it could be magnitude
minus 1.5 in mid October at dusk low in the west southwest sky with two nice
tails and then on the 14th and 15th right then you're going to see should
see a prominent anti-il so reserve some time plan on
losing some sleep for this comat because I think it's got some wonderful surprises in store for us and with that
I'll finish the presentation and if there are any questions I'd be happy to to
answer I have a question not a question but a comment yes uh Bob I thought your
your lecture was wonderful it was emotional and you
captured the the joy and the fun of looking at clet oh thank you when I did
my quotation earlier I clearly did the wrong one I did the Hardy poem about
eclipses when I really should have honored you which I would like to do now
with a line from Wesley belter time has not lessened the ageold
alure of the Comets in some ways their mystery is only deepened with the years
at each return a comet brings with it the questions which were asked when it was here before and as it rounds the and
backs away toward the long slow night of its up healing it leaves behind with us
those questions still unanswered to hunt a speck of moving Haze may seem a
strange Pursuit but even though we fail the search is so rewarding for no better
way can we come face to face night after night with such a wealth of riches as
old crois of Egypt never dreamed does I just wanted to share that with you Bob
it was wonderful and I'm so glad I this question oh that was just thank you so much to and that it couldn't have been a
better ending I just love that quote from the PO that was really good and it really gets to the heart of comments too
it's just we have all these questions they come we try to get answers then they leave towards their Appia then we
just we wait for the next we Marvel and we keep asking so fabulous
great great and I have a question um uh my question is um you know out of all
your years of observing comets you know and and all the stuff the new stuff
we've learned you know with uh the uh spacecraft visiting them and stuff and
those stunning images that we now have of comets you know within the span of
our lifetimes we've gone from like you know just kind of blurry images on film
to things that are just you know AB absolutely incredible but what is what
is the most surprising thing to you out of all all your time looking at comets
and and you're I know you're a deep thinker about uh what's going on in the cosmos and how it affects you and your
place in the universe what what has been maybe the biggest surprise to you oh
well well maybe just two thoughts on that uh I have thanks Scott um I think
the first thing is how a comet is um it's almost like a metaphor for life for
me because and that's why I like to see comets from beginning to end because
they start small like little babes and and then they grow and they become these
magnificent creatures you know in their youth and vigorous and then they lose
their Tails like I'm losing my hair and they fade and they go away and I love
seeing the human life cycle repeated in comets so I generally like to start and
finish with them see them all the way through rather than way for them to look really wonderful so every aspect is
important to me and then perhaps the most if you're talking about just like a most amazing sight I've ever seen with the comet I guess there are two all
right Comet Sho maker Levy the pieces that hit Jupiter and made those big black spots courtesy of doid and then
second thing was when Comet Holmes underw underwent a massive Outburst uh
back I I can't remember what year it was 2000 something early and it suddenly
became this star-like object and then it bloomed into this naked eye Comet just in a matter of days just the the how how
quickly and surprisingly Comics change has always kept my interest in F Fascination I find it they're just
amazing and and and finally sorry maybe one more i' like that they're made out
of virtually nothing you could take that whole blue ion tail crush it down and
stick it into a lunch sandwich lunch bag there's like nothing there even Comet
dust is wow so if you look at what nature cantic yeah oh yeah if but you
look at what nature can do with so little it can create these absolute wonders and that to me shows you the
depth of Nature's ability to stir our souls so I love that about comets many
things in nature but very well said very
well great I'd just like to add something if I might um I had the
privilege of seeing Bob speak in person up in Green Bay actually toer Wisconsin
earlier in the year uh I have never seen as Dynamic a speaker as Bob King and all
I can say is invite him because you will not be disappointed uh he spoke on aor
at that time and uh he's animated and enthusiastic and it's infectious and uh
it it's something to see it really is and I'd like to add uh one other comment
I had the opportunity to see the be tapestry once which had
uh an image of a comet alie's Comet and uh of course that's depicting this
tapestry depicts the events leading up to the Norman invasion of England and it
it just shows you the importance that have been attached to comets for well over a thousand years and certainly
before that and Bob thank you for another great talk well thank you um
Chuck for your kind words really and that I that was a really good thing to bring up about the biotapestry because
it shows how how these Celestial OB objects even though they're so remote
they play into human lives they they create meaning in our life you know if
we choose to let them in so yeah
absolutely there's a couple of comments here uh one Alan Dyer watching uh so and
uh he says great talk thank you and uh rich kaying watching on YouTube says Bob yeah Bob
was terrific when he spoke at our star party at Hidden Hollow so thanks guys thank you Rich and thank
you alen very much Carol you're muted you're muted
Carol you're muted again you're muted again Carol
there we go there we go I like your last comment when you said there's hope that we might have an extension of how long
we can see it I really like that well you know amateur astronomers
we are the most hopeful people in the world aren't we or perhaps the whole universe sounds like it's a little
better location once we get further into October as well yeah October um I I
think we it really we only have a few days of seeing the comet before it actually starts heading back down
towards the sun like on the 29th so it's already losing altitude again so it's
just that little interval in the morning but then far more leisurely uh in
October so yes I think it should be a very nice comment she make a lot of
opportunities too yeah Tel just a telephoto you know you don't need a telescope to photograph this Comet at
dusk I think like a 200 mimet lens should be wonderful yeah I think having it in the
evening too uh you don't have to get up in the morning you can stay up in the evening watch it from the very beginning
or as soon as it rises so check your location carefully if it's that close to
the Horizon now three or four degrees Yeah that's gonna be tough it will be tough yeah that's finding that spot is
key you know where you can get a good view and uh yeah I'm sure sure some of us will be thwarted by you know that
band of clouds right there on the horizon sometimes but any clear night is worthwhile going out to check it out
that happens all right if there's no other questions I know Bob needs to get moving he has somewhere else he needs to
be too thank you so much for doing this and such a short notice I really
appreciate it I'm sure everybody does that was so interesting thank you very much Terry and um I had a blast so we
did too we'll see you all soon I appreciate all
right Bob take care all right take care clear skies byebye all right I've got Chuck and
Carol here Chuck you did not get a chance um on Al live is there anything
that you would like to say tonight or any news you'd like to update or anything well I'd like to tell everyone
or remind everyone that we have a convention next year in a most unusual place and an exciting place if you're
into observing under Skies approaching a perfect dark sqm 22 type sky and that's
at Bryce Canyon uh next June 25th through 28th uh Bryce Canyon of course is a
national park in southern Utah and our convention will be held at Ruby's Inn
which uh we have a block of 275 rooms and they're going fast already in
September um I think we already have a third that number of registrations already for this convention so you want
to grab uh an opportunity to go to this convention lots of telescopes we will be
observing in the National Park um at a and all I can tell you if you've never
seen a Utah Sky you're in for a treat uh we've been holding asoto competitions at
a number of our conventions and we're going to hold one uh at Bryce Canyon
next year we provide these incredible looking medals to our winners for first
second and third place in multiple categories of astrophotography and they're engraved on
the back and if you want to get in on that please come to Bryce Canyon next
year it's close to Zion National Park it's close to the Grand Canyon it's close to Las Vegas you can make a heck
of a vacation out of it uh if you come I will add that these astrophoto
competitions and these medals are being uh provided or competitions with medals are
being provided by the league also at a number of our regional conventions Terry and I will be at Hidden Hollow this
weekend um I'm leaving tomorrow morning for that and we will uh also be uh
providing astrophoto competitions again at the North Central region and
Midstates region uh conventions next year so if you want to participate in
those uh please uh join us and uh I won't uh go into anything else at this
time but uh I hope you will come to some of these conventions because they're exciting and a lot of fun thanks Terry
thank you Chuck Carol how about you it's good to see you I haven't seen you since KC yeah good to be here uh I haven't got
anything further to offer uh we got a lot of exciting things coming up and we're certainly looking forward to the
bras Canyon I know our restoration is coming from all corners of the country uh I have a feeling we have some
International visitors before it's all over so it's really creating a lot of excitement yes it definitely is um also
Chuck didn't mention Chuck is the new president of the astronomical League uh
and we there's a whole not a totally new executive committee but there's new
officers and we're getting everybody together here in the next month and
Carol is our immediate past president he has ran all the terms that he could run
so he stayed there and worked and worked and worked and now Carol has stepped away a little bit but he hasn't gone far
we'll be inviting him back and back and back so uh thank you for being here Carol and I would like to say everybody
join oh I'm sorry Chuck I get you in a minute everybody join us at Hidden Hollow this weekend uh there will be a
great lakes regional meeting too but there'll be a lot going on at Hidden Hollow and as Bob said it is is a lot of
fun it's a great place to be so please join us there and Chuck I'll let you say
what I I just wanted to say the Carol can't get too far because he doesn't have the combination to the lock on his
leg chains but [Laughter] uh I thought I was gonna get to Betty's
list maybe I'm saved after all Carol Carol Carol by the way for
those of you are not aware of it uh served a total of four terms as president he uh had two terms back in
earlier in this century and uh uh and then uh two more terms recently it's
first person ever to do that yeah I'll tell you we've Ser I've served with some great people and the new leadership is
going to take it to the next rung as well and I'm really excited about uh where they're going to take us so it's
GNA be a good journey thank you Carol um and thank you
everybody I know this was a short notice uh program but we wanted to get Bob on
here and hear some more about the comment so thank you everybody if no one else has anything else to say I'm G to
turn it back to Scott to go ahead and close it out but thank you everybody for being here we really appreciate
it well thank you Terry um yes we have
uh um you know I I I would be remiss in not recommending that people join the
astronomical League I did put in chat uh into the live chat the the direct link
for membership uh it is a fantastic organization it is I think the world's
largest organization of the amateur astronomers certainly uh the largest Federation of astronomy clubs in the
world um and they put on fantastic events you know of course one of them
being Alcon but they also have Regional uh astronomical League conventions that
are very very inform formative and great way to get to meet uh and and uh join up
with old and new friends um and so uh and with all their you know observing
programs that they have their Awards programs that they do uh you know
there's nothing like the astronomical league and so um so anyways I'm very
happy to be um uh there to help support them in the way that we can uh we do uh
the N we do underwrite the national young astronomers award the Leslie Peltier award and the U Willamina
Fleming Award right now which is kind of a more recent uh astrophotography award
for uh specifically aimed uh at women so um we um I also want to say that we will
have our next Global star party which the astronomical League always participates in uh and that will be on
October oober 1st and so that's uh that's going to be very interesting and
um this time the theme is cloudy nights is was suggested by David Levy uh and so
I took the uh privilege of of inviting the U uh the guy that is behind cloudy
nights which is Mike beer at astronomics and he's going to uh give us uh some
background on what cloudy nights has offered and continues to offer as one of the world's larg EST um uh user groups
uh on astronomy that covers you know virtually every aspect of of gear and
events and and anything to do with with uh amateur astronomy so you're not going
to want to miss that um and what else is going well we got this big comment
that that you heard Bob King talk about I'm so excited uh to go and see it
myself so uh as I know all of you guys are so thanks again for letting us uh
invade your uh evening and um I have a couple of videos that we'll be showing
here um so um you guys have a great night and thank you Terry and Chuck and
uh and Carol for uh being there so thank you Scott yep take care thanks
when I began with the sun Riser project we had less than a thousand Comet that was over 20 years ago so the fact that
we finally reached this Milestone 5,000 comets it's just unbelievable to me
sraer project is a project that allows anyone anywhere in the world to sit down
with a laptop and discover comets the clue to what a sungrazing comet is kind of in the name there it's literally a
comet that grazes by the sun the sun Grazer project relies exclusively on images of the Sun
from spacecraft and the images that we discover nearly all of our comets in
come from the solar and heliospheric Observatory or Soho that is a satellite
that was launched in 1995 so it's been operating for a long time now 3 2 1
ignition and liftoff of Soho and the atlas vehicle on an international
mission of solar physics our participants go to the Soho website
where we have all of our latest images from the spacecraft and they download those images and it's really a simple as
looking through them flicking through the image and looking for something tiny and faint and moving in a different
direction to the Stars discovering a comet is a very
unique feeling you have this realization that suddenly you found a piece of the
solar system a piece of the universe that no one has ever seen before prior to the launch of the Soho Mission and
the sungrazer project there were only a couple of dozen sungrazing comets on
record that's all we knew existed the 5,000 Comet miles stone is a huge
achievement it's one that none of us dreamed we would even get to so simply the statistics of 5,000 comets and
looking at their orbits and trajectories through space is a
super unique data set it's a really valuable science and it is just a
testament to the countless hours the project participants have put into this
we absolutely would not under any circumstance St and be here if it wasn't
for what our project volunteers have done that's really what 5,000 comets represents it's 20 or more years of
invaluable discoveries from the project volunteers
I think one of the ageold human questions perhaps going back to the beginning of humanity is are we alone in
the universe and that Maps directly into why are we
here Osiris Rex is three missions in one to make that kind of exploration cost
effectively for not much more than the price of a Blockbuster movie
[Music] there's been nothing like Osiris Rex in NASA's repertoire I like to call it the
Daredevil
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spacecraft we're going back to the dawn of the solar system we're looking for Clues as to why Earth is a habitable
world and of course the biggest question the one that drives my scientific investigations is the origin of Life
what is life how did it originate and why was the Earth the place that it
occurred 10 seconds 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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