Comet Atlas May Soon Be Visible to the Naked Eye

[Friends just call me Ross]

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Space Weather News for March 18, 2020

Above: Comet Atlas (upper left) glides by spiral galaxy M81 on March 18th.

Credit: Rolando Ligustri 

 

The comet was discovered in December 2019 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. Astronomers quickly realized it might be special. On May 31, 2020, Comet ATLAS will pass deep inside the orbit of Mercury only 0.25 AU from the sun. If it can survive the blast furnace of solar heating, it could put on a good show.

 

However, no one expected the show to start this soon. More than 2 months before perihelion (closest approach to the sun), Comet ATLAS is already "heating up." The worldwide Comet Observation Database shows it jumping from magnitude +17 in early February to +8 in mid-March–a 4000-fold increase in brightness. It could become visible to the naked eye in early April.

 

"Right now the comet is releasing huge amounts of its frozen volatiles (gases)," says Battams. "That’s why it’s brightening so fast."

 

COMET ATLAS IS BRIGHTENING FASTER THAN EXPECTED: Get ready for a wild ride. Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4) is plunging toward the sun and, if it doesn't fly apart first, it could become one of the brightest comets in years. Amateur astronomers are already getting fantastic images as the comet brightens even faster than expected. Visit https://spaceweather.com/

 for the full story.

 

[daydream]

"Comet ATLAS continues to brighten much faster than expected," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC.

Current best estimates of the comet’s peak brightness in May range from magnitude +1 to -5. If Comet ATLAS hits the high end of that range, a bit brighter than Venus, it could become visible in broad daylight.

 

Comet McNaught  performed that very trick 13 years ago. On Jan. 13, 2007, it swooped past the sun shining at magnitude -5. The absurdly-bright comet was visible at high noon with its tail jutting across blue sky

 

 

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Battams is not optimistic, though: "My personal intuition is that Comet ATLAS is over-achieving, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it fade rapidly and possibly even disintegrate before reaching the sun," he says.

Come to think of it, that would be a good show, too. Fortunately, NASA has spacecraft with cameras that specialize in seeing things close to the sun.

"The Heliospheric Imager on NASA's STEREO spacecraft will get a great view of ATLAS from mid-May through early June," says Battams. "The camera is very sensitive, so we might be able to observe ATLAS’s tail interacting with the solar wind and outflows–as well as any potential breakup events."

Stay tuned!

 

 

[Friends just call me Ross]

CometbAtlas is getting closer and closer.

I hope it doesn't fizzle out 

cuz it's such a pretty color.

 

 

[Friends just call me Ross]

THE SIZE OF COMET ATLAS: No one knows how big the icy core of Comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4) might be--possibly no wider than a few kilometers. One thing's for sure, though, the comet's atmosphere is huge. New images from amateur astronomers around the world show that ATLAS's gaseous envelope has ballooned in diameter to ~720,000 km--about half as wide as the sun.  "Comet ATLAS's coma (atmosphere) is approximately 15 arcminutes in diameter," reports Michael Jäger of Weißenkirchen, Austria, who took the picture, above, on March 18th. "Its newly-formed tail is about the same size."   Other astronomers are getting similar results. 15 arcminutes = a quarter of a degree. Given Comet ATLAS's distance of 1.1 AU on March 18th, that angle corresponds to a physical size of 720,000 km.  On the scale of big things in the solar system, Comet ATLAS falls somewhere between the sun (1,392,000 km  diameter) and Jupiter (139,820 km). It's not unusual for comets to grow so large. While their icy solid cores are typically mere kilometers in diameter, they can spew prodigious amounts of gas and dust into space, filling enormous volumes. In the fall of 2007, Comet 17P/Holmes partially exploded and, for a while, had an atmosphere even larger than the sun. The Great Comet of 1811 also had a sun-sized coma. Whether Comet ATLAS will eventually rival those behemoths of the past remains to be seen. Right now, Comet ATLAS is certainly the biggest green thing in the Solar System. Its verdant hue comes from diatomic carbon, C2, a molecule commonly found in comets.  Gaseous C2 emits a beautiful green glow in the near-vacuum of space.  Currently, Comet ATLAS is shining like an 8th magnitude star--invisible to the unaided eye but an easy target for backyard telescopes. The comet is brightening rapidly as it comes closer to Earth and the sun. By late May it could rival Venus in the evening twilight sky. Stay tuned!

[Friends just call me Ross]

The above article snippet is from Spaceweather.com

My phone wouldn't let me paste as plain text or add the URL for the article.

My phone has been behaving really wonky for the past few days now.

 

I think Verizon may have contracted a virus of its own.   

[Friends just call me Ross]

Atlas may become visible to the eyes sooner than originally expected:

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Shortly after its discovery, C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) began growing brighter than expected—a lot brighter. So bright that it can now be seen by amateur astronomers with binoculars.

 

It is expected to reach its peak brightness at the end of May.

 

Making it even more exciting is its color—slightly green.

 

Those who have been tracking the comet note that it jumped from magnitude +17 in February to +8 just a month later—a 4000-fold increase in brightness. At such a rate, it could be visible to people in zones free from light pollution with their naked eyes in just a couple of weeks.

phys.org

 

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Comet ATLAS burning bright with atmosphere HALF the size of the Sun

COMET ATLAS continues to grow in brightness and size as it zooms through the solar system towards the Sun, with its atmosphere now half as wide as our host star.

Experts are unsure whether it will burn to dust or whether it will produce a spectacular display of explosions as it approaches the Sun.

Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC said: “ATLAS is a bit of a wildcard, and there’s a spectrum of possibilities as it nears the sun.

“At one extreme, it could simply crumble away in the coming weeks, and at the other extreme it could brighten up tremendously.

“It has an unusually small perihelion distance inside of Mercury’s orbit, which bodes well for getting those frozen gases fizzing furiously.”

express.co.uk

 

 

Comet Atlas 5 days ago:

[Myew]

(Matthew 24:29) “Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Are there any eclipses coming up?