Astroblog: Is 73P-B disintergrating?

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Is 73P-B disintergrating?

Fragment B of comet 73P has been behaving oddly during its outburst. Is it disintergrating? There has been a lot of discussion about this on the comets mailing list. Here are some images for you to look at that show the comets unusula features. 73B over several days, a very nice gallery of 73P fragments (including B), a good recent image, another good one, and finally an animation of some minor fragments.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:36 am

Comments:

I've been reading the same thing, possibly from the same place. Waiting for the moon to go into hiding and clear skies so I can get some images of my own.

BTW: email me when you get a chance. Thanks

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:42 am

Same here (although I won't be able to do any imaging). Clouds and bright Moon ruin any chance of observing at the moment.

73P-B seems to be hanging on there at the moment.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 9:06 am

Ok...so &#P is breaking up. What are the chances, being that C will past ~7 million miles clsoe to earth, that a piece can diverge a few degrees and subsequently be on target to hit earth? Has anyoine done any modeling to th is effect?

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:15 am

This was considered on the comets list over the past few days. The annswer is no. The fragments are still gravitationally bound, so they won't go flying off (see the Hubble and ESO photos which are a week apart, the fragmenst are still tighly grouped). Also 5.5 million miles is the closest any fragmment will get to Earth, none of the smaller fragmenst have anything like the dynamic velocity to come remotely close to Earth. So, no substaial frogments will come anywhere near Earth, but there might be an intereting meteor shower in 2022.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 11:23 am