Astroblog: 73P at its brightest

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

73P at its brightest

Northeastern horizon as seen from Adelaide at 5.00 am, click to enlarge (similar views will be seen elsewhere in the southern hemisphere at equivalent local times). Also see maps at Southern Skywatch.

I've been off air for a bit of a while as I write lectures and mark student papers, I'm also trying to finish my Sky&Space contribution, whihc is WAY overdue. But the next few days will be when the 73P frgments are at their brightest. I've been pretty well clouded out, but a couple of mornings ago the sky was clear ... and I saw nothing. Well, I thought I could see a faint furry smudge with averted vision in binoculars, but the Moonlight just washed everything else out. Othere people we reprting seeing 73P quite easily under Moonlight, so don't be discouraged by my lack of success.

73P-B is in outburst again, and it appears another large fragment has detached, see images here, here, here and here. A very nice animation is available to the patient here.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:17 pm

Comments:

Hi Ian!

First of all, I want to say how helpful your astroblog is, and how interesting too! I've been reading it ever since you helped me when I was first getting into sky watching, and didn't know what all the bright stars were in the sky. If it wasn't for you, I probably would've given up. But now I am right into it all, and my parents even bought me a telescope for my birthday. It's nothing fancy, but I can still look at Jupiter and Saturn quite well, so I am pleased.

Now to what I was going to say! Tonight I was over at my parent's house, and I was looking up at Jupiter (just with the naked eye) because I was about to show my Mum the Virgo constellation, and WHAM this HUGE fireball meteor thing zoomed across going downwards, just a bit below and to the left of Jupiter. I was stoked!! It was huge!! Bright bluey white.

Would've that been something to do with this 73P-B you are talking about?

Thanks again!

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:42 am

Danae, I'm glad you find my writing helpful. The sky is a beautiful place, and I'm glad people can be introduced to its beauty by me.

The fireball you saw is probably a sporadic, unnassociaed with any meteor stream. The occur from time to time, and are rare delights. We are unlikely to see any meteors from the debris of 73P until around 2011.

# posted by