would anyone be willing to venture a idea what is happening with comet 17P/Holmes?

Question

comet has recently increased in brightness....approaching the sun...unusual

http://www.spaceweather.com/

how is it staying togather....if it increased in intesity 10X

Answer 1

Actually, Holmes is retreating from the Sun, not approaching. It was closest (perihelion) in early May. So it isn't as if the Sun's heat caused it to explode. I don't think anyone knows the real explanation. It increased its brightness by over 14 magnitudes in few hours, and is rapidly increasing in size as each day goes by. It's an amazing object, well worth taking a look at, since it's easily visible to the naked eye close to Alpha and Delta Persei, slightly brighter than Delta. I was able to spot it in binoculars because, like a planet, it doesn't twinkle, while the background stars do.

Answer 2

Comets occasionally undergo "outbursts" in which they suddenly increase in brightness. It's thought to be caused by something like a trapped pocket of gas suddenly bursting through the surface, raising a cloud of dust in the process. These outbursts are seldom as dramatic as this one, though.

Comet 17/P Holmes has done this at least once before. It was a naked-eye object when it was first discovered in 1892, too. In the intervening years, it returned about every seven years as a very dim (14th magnitude or so) telescopic comet. In fact, it was so dim it wasn't seen at all for a number of years.

My guess is that there is something structurally or compositionally unusual about this comet that causes these dramatic outbursts at long intervals.

Answer 3

Ha! i'm afraid that your question is honest. Oh, my! i became into an evangelical Christian for 25 years or so, and in that factor I heard preachers say on a minimum of three occassions that some heavenly physique - comet, asteroid, in spite of - became into headed in the direction of the earth and that it may be the usher in of the Rapture, Armaggedon, the Tribulation, or the advent of the Anti-Christ. i've got additionally heard many different issues that exceeded off (or have been purported to have exceeded off) meant the return of Christ and the top of the Earth became into forthcoming... each thing from the Viet Nam conflict, the upward push of communism, or maybe the Beatles (truly! - they have been coaching us to worship people truly than God, so have been making waiting us for the advent of the anti-Christ. Thank Bob Larson for that nonsense). i does not issue with reference to the top of the international merely yet... And that's humorous, those comparable preachers who had complete faith in astronomers while they mentioned some thing the preachers could desire to apply, are the comparable ones who do not have faith astronomers while they are announcing the universe is billions of years previous, or biologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, or the different scientists who proposes something that contradicts their very own narrow-minded view of the international.

Answer 4

Today's pic at APOD is of the comet, and they've got a few theories mentioned there:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071026.html

The comet was actually the reason I popped in to Y!A tonight...I actually saw the comet last night and didn't realize what it was (I just thought that Perseus looked odd...chocked it up to the full moon washing things out and making me mis-remember the constellation), now today come to find out from APOD that it was actually a comet.

Answer 5

kewl! hope it's not an omen!

Answer 6

it is gettin it's friction on