| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
‘Out of this World’ Celestial Visitor in the Solar System (+Video)
There’s a very strange comet flying through our solar neighborhood that is like nothing astronomers have ever seen in a another comet.
And this had led some to speculate that maybe it’s not from around here but came to our solar neighborhood by chance from a completely different solar system far way.
It’s called Comet 69P/Machholz, and it’s the most-likely suspect responsible for the annual meteor shower happening this week.
If that’s the case, then right now Earth is flying through this alien comet’s tail, which consists of dust and debris the comet has shed in its path around the sun.
What is known is how strange this comet is compared to most other comets in our solar system. And its bizarre qualities are what have led scientists to think this comet was somehow flung far from its home somewhere in interstellar space only to later be caught up in our sun’s gravity.
“First its orbit is about as unround as possible. This alone suggests a capture-origin, but doesn’t prove it,” Berman told Business Insider in an email. “But stranger still is its composition, measured spectroscopically during its close 2007 visit. This shows an almost total lack of carbon and cyanogen, very un-cometlike.”
Read more here: http://news.yahoo.com/watch-weeks-meteor-shower-created-202854104.html
The Unusual Spectrum of Comet 96P/Machholz
http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/664/2/L119/fulltext/
Family ties: Meet the Machholz’s — possibly the most complex family in the solar system!
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=news/family_ties
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.gr/
Image credit: NASA
