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Is It Aiming for US?

Take a look at this animation (provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Science Visualization lab). It shows the path of the incoming comet around the Sun, beginning right about now and continuing into next year. As you watch, you’ll see that it is right on path to go around the Sun and that it really doesn’t get very close to Earth. It’ll be close enough that we’ll see it as a nice elongated patch of light in the sky before perihelion on the 28th of November and then again in the second week of December right after it goes around the Sun. Comet ISON will come closest to Earth in January 2014, but as you can see from the video, it will be well above the plane of the planets, and thus proves no danger to our planet. Or us. There’s not much it can do (being a little chunk of ice and rock) at a distance of some 63 MILLION kilometers.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is there’s a good chance you’ll be able to see this comet if it continues to brighten up. Its plasma and dust tails are forming nicely, so now we just have to wait to see how it survives its close approach to the Sun. Some scientists suspect it could be pulled apart as it rounds the Sun. That’s entirely possible since comets are really just dirty iceballs and strong gravitation and heat are their worst enemies. Heat, as should be obvious, will melt the ices on the comet, which can also destabilize the nucleus, making it more susceptible to breaking up under the influence of the Sun’s strong gravity.

The other reason I’m sharing this is because there are still people out there who are so desperate for some kind of catastrophe (No, in this case I’m not talking about certain right-wing politicians) that they’ve made up some incredible and frankly pretty crazy stories about what they think this comet REALLY is. None of it is, of course, scientific or based on actual facts. However, the Comet ISON nutters (or, as one of my British friends on Facebook calls them: Numpties) have hysteria on their side, pseudoscience, and a lot of screeching points—er, I mean talking points—to explain how there is a spacecraft hidden behind the planet, how it’s going to hit our planet, or that it’s going to cause earthquakes, floods, plagues, etc. You name it, these pseudoscientists will traffic in any kind of information that makes no sense and invoke a comet as the cause. I think they’re really hung up on this whole idea of a comet with its own spacecraft. And hey, who wouldn’t like one of those to take long drives in? Alas for the numpties, It turns out those spacecraft turned out to be entirely explainable lens effects in the camera used to take the images. These guys know that, now, but they still seize on those spots in the image as proof! proof! I tell you! that there’s something ooky and weird about Comet ISON. I don’t know about you, but I think the ooky and weird is definitely in high supply here on Earth, not on ISON.

Now think about this. Isn’t this whole pseudo-science circus about Comet ISON giving you a strong sense of deja vu? Every time a comet comes around, the same nutjobs get out there and start nattering away about how it’s going to kill us, pepper the planet with deadly gas “particles”, set off volcanoes, hit the planet, take off with the women and babies, and who knows what else excites their feverish imaginations. And yet, we’ve had dozens and even hundreds of comets go by and there’s been no increase in the nearly 3,000 quakes the Earth has every day. Volcanos erupt whenever and wherever they please, and no tiny little ice hunk is going to tell THEM what to do. And, the wimmenfolk are still here (some of us are busy writing about real science, not nutjobbery). In short, despite the fact that all these comets have been by, NOT ONE of these nutjob predictions has ever come true. Ever.

So, next time you read or hear nonsense about how the comet is gonna “git us”, take it for what it’s worth (nothing). And, get out there and observe Comet ISON, once it’s bright enough to see. Comets are cool to watch. Check out the observing pages on Sky&Telescope and Astronomy magazines for the latest info on where and when to look.

Want to see another version of that orbit video that you can use to help you understand how Comet ISONs path goes? Glad to oblige. It’s right here. Its viewpoint is as if you were in a T-38 chase plane riding a few tens of thousands of kilometers alongside the comet.

Patchy Clouds on a Distant World

Even though it’s not doing any more planet-searching due to an equipment failure, the Kepler telescope (along with the Spitzer Space Telescope) have returned data about a distant exoplanet called Kepler-7b that show it has clouds in its atmosphere. The data allowed astronomers to create an atlas of cloud forms over this planet, ranging from high clouds and clear skies in the western to somewhat clearer regions elsewhere. This is the first time that a “reflective signature” (that is, data that indicate reflectivity of an object in space) has been seen.

Kepler-7b (left), which is 1.5 times the radius of Jupiter (right), is the first exoplanet to have its clouds mapped. The cloud map was produced using data from NASA’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT

Kepler-7b planet radiates much more heat than most giant planets that Kepler scientists have found and its reflectance definitely implies clouds. It lies much too far away from its star to account for the light scientists see being reflected by the planet. That almost certainly suggest that there are clouds floating in this world’s upper atmosphere.

During its mission, Kepler identified planets by fixing its gaze at a specific point in the sky and watching for dips in starlight that occur as the planets transit, or pass in front of their stars, blocking the light. This technique and other observations of Kepler-7b previously revealed that it is one of the puffiest planets known. If it could somehow be placed in a tub of water, it would float. The planet was also found to whip around its star in slightly less than five days, giving it a very short year.

Kepler’s partner in the observations of Kepler-7b, the Spitzer Space Telescope, can focus on one part of the sky for long periods of time, just as Kepler was designed to do. Spitzer is sensitive to infrared light which means it can “see” the heat coming from a distant object and take its temperature. During its observation, Kepler detected a temperature for Kepler-7b somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Much hotter than most household ovens.

Using the two of these telescopes together to observe distant worlds gives astronomers a new way to study planets that lie far away circling other stars. It also allows astronomers to fine-tune their search for clouds on smaller, Earth-like worlds. (If you’re interested in more details you can read more about this discovery here.)

Now that Kepler is no longer actively looking for planets, scientists are turning their attention to the immense amount of data Kepler sent back, and using telescopes such as Spitzer (and ground-based instruments) to do observations on already known planet candidates.

I find it amazing that we can see these clouds on such a distant world (it lies trillions of miles from Earth). But, I find really impressive is that even though Spitzer can no longer do the most sensitive observations (due to its losing its instrument coolant), it can definitely still show us some amazing things in the cosmos. There are many more planet candidates discovered by Kepler that scientists will be studying, so look for more Kepler-based announcements in the foreseeable future.

The Spacewriter's Ramblings

Comet ISON (not the Terrible)

Is It Aiming for US?

Exoplanet Cloud Atlas

Patchy Clouds on a Distant World

Exploring Science and the Cosmos