Watch the most powerful comet explosion in history as it spreads dust across the universe.

In July, it will be seen in the skies near you.

This next summer, the sky will be graced by the dust trail left behind by the comet whose outburst was recorded as the largest ever observed, and it will resemble a giant hourglass.

The night show will be provided by comet 17P/Holmes, which in October 2007 released a massive burst of gas and dust, causing its brightness to increase by a factor of a million and momentarily becoming the largest object in the solar system. During that small window of time, the comet's coma, which is the dust cloud surrounding the comet body, had a diameter greater than that of the sun.

According to Maria Gritsevich, a planetary scientist at the University of Helsinki in Finland, the particles emitted by this record-breaking eruption appeared to disperse into space initially.

Gritsevich and her coworkers recently published a study outlining a new model of the comet's dust trail. According to this model, the comet's dust track has persisted. The dust particles left behind by the outburst travel in an elliptical orbit between the point where the outburst first occurred and a point on the opposite side of the dust trail's voyage around the sun. This point is only observable from the southern hemisphere.

In 2022, the particles will once again begin to accumulate near the outburst point, indicating that the dust trail will be visible from the Northern Hemisphere, even to amateur skywatchers.

According to the study's principal author, Gritsevich, according to Live Science, "Today's telescopes are so good that any very modest system will do it."

Orbital flashes of activity

Comet 17P/Holmes follows an orbit between the planets Mars and Jupiter. Edwin Holmes, an English astronomer, made the initial discovery of it in the year 1892. He was monitoring the Andromeda galaxy at the time, and it erupted in a flash of light that was significant enough to draw his attention. The explosion in 2007 was significantly more severe.

In an email to Live Science, research co-author Markku Nissinen, an astronomer with the Finnish Ursa Astronomical Association, stated."So the 17P/Holmes itself is definitely peculiar."

Although no one is certain, the comet's subsurface ice may undergo a transition from a disordered amorphous arrangement to a structured crystalline layout in the process of producing these dramatic outbursts. Although no one is certain, it is possible that this transition will take place. As a result of this transition, gas is released from within the ice, resulting in an outward pressure on the comet's surface. Consequently, an outburst of ice, gas, and dust is produced. (Nissinen called it "amazing" that this occurs without the comet being completely obliterated.)

The researchers studied the physics of the dust trail in the new study recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Their goal was to understand how the dust trail's initial shape led to the orbit that is visible today.

A smattering of dust.

The researchers tracked the path of the dust trail over time by combining measurements from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres with an understanding of how gravity and the solar wind operate on particles of varying sizes. Due to the forces of gravity and solar wind, the particles self-sort themselves by size as they move through space. As a result, they often arrive at the two nodes in their orbit in the order of medium, big, and small particles. A relic of the initial spherical burst of dust from the comet body, the dust also moves in a subtle hourglass pattern as it travels through space. This shape consists of two bulges of dust on either side and a constricted zone of dust in the middle of the hourglass.

The particles are extremely small, with some measuring as little as a fraction of a millimeter in diameter. However, because they reflect the sun's light, one can observe them through a telescope as a hazy trail in the night sky. (The course has previously been seen, most notably from the Northern Hemisphere in 2014 and 2015; however, the extent it is seen depends on how the particles interact with the sun.)According to Gritsevich, one report has already been made by an amateur astronomer in Finland who took photographs of the trail in February and March. Nissinen noted that once the sun's brightness no longer obscures the particles, other observers in the Northern Hemisphere will have the opportunity to search for the trail around the end of July or after. Pegasus is the constellation name containing the convergence point where the particles gather.

According to Gritsevich, modeling the comet's dust path could one day assist astronomers in conducting in-depth research on comets. Scientists could launch spacecraft to collect material from the comet if they had a detailed map of where the comet's dust is located. This would be a simpler concept than attempting to intercept and sample the comet itself. Now, she and her coworkers intend to replicate the dust path of the initial eruption in 1892 to locate the dust that resulted from that occurrence.

Nissinen stated that it is impossible to predict when the next outburst of the comet will occur because the comet has not undergone an explosion since the year 2007. 17P/Holmes erupted twice in quick succession in the years 1892 and 1893, indicating that it has the potential to do so at any time. On January 31, 2028, the comet will make its next pass, the closest it will go to the sun.

 

 

Article source :  https://www.livescience.com/comet-17p-holmes-dust-trail

Image source  : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/bulan-tiga-raja-hutan-5830698/

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