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Yeah, I went out last night to try to spot the comet. There was a pretty clear sky, but it's low in the sky, so there's a lot of atmosphere in the way.
I didn't find it. I hope it flares up enough to see it on Monday night, as the collision won't be visible from here.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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" Arthur C. Clarke envisioned sending a spacecraft to blow a hole in a comet in his 1968 book ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' yet technology limitations have prevented such a mission until now."
Gee, I don't remember that part. Must have been a tangent.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Gee, I hope the "comet" isn't really an intergalactic spaceship coming to make contact with us. 'Cause blowing it up might really tick off the aliens.
There is very little that is worse than a ticked off alien capable of intergalactic (or, hey, even intragalactic) space travel.
For July 4th, I'll be sure to line my hat with aluminum foil and to wear my Ray-Bans to block any alien rays.
Me, with Ray-Bans -->
Me, showing you the aluninum foil inside my hat -->
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I never get to see anything in Michigan. Earlier this year a bunch of my friends at school in the western part of the state got to see the Northern Lights, but eastern Michigan is like an astronomer's dead zone.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Too much smog in So Cal to see anything in the sky.
Some of my friends laugh about how all you can see at times are one or two stars. Then I tell 'em, "Those aren't stars you idiots. They're planets! Our air's too dirty to see stars!"
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quote:Too much smog in So Cal to see anything in the sky.
See, this makes me wonder about people who love Southern California so much...with all that smog? really?
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quote:Too much smog in So Cal to see anything in the sky.
See, this makes me wonder about people who love Southern California so much...with all that smog? really?
He exaggerates. A lot.
While we do still have the occasional really-bad-air-quality day, they have become pretty uncommon. Even I, who really notice them, love living in LA.
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No, seriously. She talks a lot about the interconnectedness of all things, and that idea, to some extent, makes sense to me. So I have a problem with "We don't know much about "x". So, let's go blow a hole in it and see what we can find out, regardless of possible consequences!"
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quote:I read a lot of Madeline L'Engle as a child.
No, seriously. She talks a lot about the interconnectedness of all things, and that idea, to some extent, makes sense to me.So I have a problem with "We don't know much about "x". So, let's go blow a hole in it and see what we can find out, regardless of possible consequences!"
I understand L'Engles' perception of the universe (because I love her books) and I mean no contempt, rudeness, or elitism here, but it's not a living being, it's a comet. Other than orbits, comets are unpredictable. Until there is something safer than thin-skinned rockets and space shuttles for manned flight to a comet, robotic probes smashing into the things will have to do.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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So.... I've been invited to go watch the data coming in live with the astronomy folks at Cornell by my boss, Dan, who made the Deep Impact animation that they're playing all over the place. I'm curious, but it's not until 2am, and I'm not sure I'm physically capable of staying up that late (and driving home!). Think it would be worth it, or would I be better off sleeping?
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Take a nap in the afternoon, then go, definately! Have a cup of coffee before you drive home. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I'm sure.
If you get drowsy while driving, roll down the windows for fresh air, and sing showtunes really loudly. It is hard to fall asleep while singing showtunes really loudly.
If you are too drowsy to concentrate and drive safely, pull off the road, lock your doors, recline the driver's seat and have yourself a nap.
Enjoy! (and I'm glad you're not feeling icky anymore)
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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*yawn* I don't think I'm going to go. Instead I watched the first Star Wars movie for the first time ever tonight. Mark said it was fun watching it with someone who hadn't seen it.
I just know that if I go, nothing will happen, and if I don't, they'll discover aliens or something. So, in the interest of science, I'm going to bed.
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It occurred to me that it might be much brighter than they were predicting, since the explosion seems to have been huge compared to what they expected. I wish it weren't below the horizon here!
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Lots of stuff blown out all around it will reflect more sunlight. How long it would last, I'm not sure. But it should make a difference.
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ketchupqueen, there's no need to worry about blowing up a comet! The sun is in the process of melting it and blowing all the volatile stuff off anyway. This just speeds up the process, teaching us a lot about the early solar system at the same time.
People who are worried about the negative effects humanity might have on space have no concept of the scales involved. Humanity, all six billion of us, can only now have an appreciable effect on this one planet earth. Stuff in space we can't really do much that is even noticeable yet.
Plus there's no atmosphere to disrupt, no living things to interefere with the habitat of, and so on, in the other places in the solar system we can reach so far. Perhaps a few microbes on Mars or something. Nothing that begins to compare with what we are doing to whales, dolphins, elephants, etc. right here at home. Such worry is admirable but misplaced. Worry about the stuff we do here on earth. Space can be the salvation of the whole web of earthlife, if we explore and colonize it as we should. If we don't, we'll probably go extinct.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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There will be a briefing at 1 AM Pacific time. They're saying that the pictures they showed during the webcast of the impact are pretty much raw data--they'll look even more fantastic when they've been processed. NASA got a really great look at the comet as the impactor closed in on the surface. Small craters and ridges were visible. The impact photos were beautiful. I can't wait for the enhanced images.
If Tempel 1 is an interstellar ship wanting to meet us, then they've been doing a lot of aimless wandering around our solar system. It was discovered in 1867. Maybe this will finally get those aliens' attention!
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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They said the comet showed 6 times brighter after the impact to Hubble and ground based observatories, (two magnitudes brighter according to the rather odd system of classifying the brightness of things in the sky). I ended up staying up to watch the briefing at 3am central. The only thing they really said was it worked beautifully, and the explosion was way on the high end of anyone's predictions. They got closeups of the comet's surface only 3 seconds before impact, which is by far the highest resolution images of a comet's surface we've ever had. It was very cool. Spine-tinglingly awesome! Nobody's ever seen a comet that close before, ever, in the history of the world.
Since it's an old comet I wonder if there are gases trapped under a thin rocky crust. Like if most of the outside of a dirty snowball melts and evaporates, woud the remaining mud form a crust on the outside of the thing? And then would what's left of the snow and ice inside the crust gradually melt and evaporate, but find it difficult to outgas to space, because of the crust?
Then if you happen to hurl a washing machine sized object at the thing very very fast (actually the comet is the one going so fast, we sort of just dropped the probe in its path) might it pop the bubble, so to speak, and let lots of junk spew out under pressure? I bet that's what happened, if I had to take a guess.
Did anyone catch the 11am briefing this morning? I think I missed it.
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Oh I think I just saw most of it. It must have been 11am pacific time. The impact velocity was six miles per second, I think they said. The comet brightened by a factor of 5 over the 15 minutes post impact, and then tapered off by about 2/3rd over the next several hours. The dude from CNN asked a really good question, does what we learn from this help us figure out how to deflect a future comet or asteroid from hitting earth. The scientists said this was a miniscule impact compared to what would be required to change the orbit of the comet. The orbital difference pre- to post-impact was vanishingly small. No difference can be detected at all. But in terms of what we learn about the structure and density, how much material shoots out, and so on, it would be very useful knowledge for starters. We would need a lot more experience at impacting things with much bigger projectiles in order to have any sort of assurance that we knew how to deflect things, apparently.
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