Famous comets. How comets get their names
The value "P/" is used instead of "C/" when the comet has an orbital period of less than 30 years (short period comet). Once a short-period comet has been observed at perihelion at least twice, it is assigned a permanent number that precedes the comet's name (for example, 1P/Halley, 2P/Encke, 152P/Helin-Lawrence, etc.). This scheme for naming comets was replaced in 1995 by Roman numerals. In the 19th century, astronomers sometimes named short-period comets after their discoverers (for example, starting in the 18th century, Halley's Comet), and in the 20th century, the names of the discoverers in comet names became very common in addition to official designations.
One of the observatory's instruments, called a coronagraph, blocks light from the sun to probe its atmosphere, and this has proven useful for viewing comets. Scientists believe that these are fragments of larger comets that are fragmented. They come so close that they are vaporized by the heat of the star.
And we're sure he'll be gone in a few weeks. But other comets can survive the heat and gravity of the Sun. These stars survive because they don't get as close to the star, so they receive less radiation and are not absorbed by the enormous gravitational force. But a large number of discoveries would not have been possible without the participation of volunteers. Some members of the astronomical community around the world are making their own observations. Result: 75% of comets were discovered by these volunteer researchers.
Currently, to identify a comet, an official alphanumeric comet number is assigned, followed by the name of the discoverer in parentheses. For example, ). Permanent, numbered periodic comets are usually written with a number and name, having the following designation: 1P/Halley, or 19P/Borrelli.
Considering the nature of the object, an initial prefix is additionally indicated. If necessary, the prefix will precede the name of the comet, which may actually refer to minor planets (or asteroids). The prefix "P/" is used to designate comets, which is used for periodic comets (whose orbital period is less than 200 years and this has been confirmed by observations of it during more than one perihelion passage). The prefix "C/" is used in the names of comets that are not periodic (in the literal sense). The prefix "X/" is for comets whose orbits cannot be calculated. And the prefix "D/" is for periodic comets that no longer exist or are considered lost.
Each discovery is reported to Battams, who confirms or does not observe and reports to the Central Office of Astronomical Telegrams, indicating official name. While comets observed on earth are named after the discoverer, those observed from space are named after the spacecraft.
With chondrites, comets constitute all the undifferentiated and primitive bodies of the solar system. But comets have not experienced hot episodes like the chondrite. These are probably the most primitive objects we can know. For the first time, it was noted that comets are divided into 2 groups according to their orbit.
If the comet is periodic, detected by observation at aphelion, and identified as Comet P/ (or D/), its name must include an official serial number (for example, ). In the case of a comet that is divided into separate components, these components should be distinguished by adding the letters A, B, C, etc. to the names. The International Astronomical Union periodically updates rules for naming comets.
Short-lived comets with two subgroups, one whose aphelion is close to the orbit of Jupiter, and the other whose aphelion is in the Kuiper belt. These latter came from the Oort cloud. The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are not at all the same distance from the sun. They do not represent the same geometry. The figure below shows that indeed the Kuiper belt extends "immediately" to the equatorial plane of the solar system, while the Oort cloud is a spherical shell, so that the outer limit is at the distance of our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri.
The discovery of a comet is reported (usually by email) to the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams (the bureau's historical name when telegrams were widely used to deliver urgent information). The bureau is operated by the International Astronomical Union at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before a comet can be named, they must receive official confirmation of its existence. This process usually involves additional observation by a second experienced observer from a different observation point. At the time of filing the application for opening new comet, it is usually given a designation associated with the year of discovery, and also a name that corresponds to the name of the astronomer or observing program that made the discovery. Sometimes the naming of a comet is delayed for several days, or several weeks, due to debate among the 16 members of the IAU committee on the naming of comets.
The two domains are not disjunct, and many objects known as "sparkles" fill the solar disk between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. If this is the case with our Sun, is it likely that other stars are also the property of the Oort cloud, whose objects are hardly influenced by their star and whose orbit can be easily disturbed? Perhaps even both clouds could interpenetrate and destabilize each other? So some advanced objects may take on a new, highly elliptical trajectory, which then leads them to freeze one or the other of the stars?
In 1558, the famous French physician Michel Nostradamus published ten centuries under the title “Prophecies of Master Michel Nostradamus,” each of which (except the seventh, unfinished) contained 100 quatrains. Each quatrain (there were 943 in total) was an allegorical prophecy set out in verse. Fans of the fortune teller claim that their idol accurately predicted the arrest of Galileo by the Inquisition, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the October Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, the collapse of the USSR and much, much more. Nostradamus alone has more than a dozen predictions about great catastrophes (almost the end of the world). Deciphering the following quatrain seemed very easy and almost unambiguous to Nostradamus scholars:
But we now also know that the accretion accompanying the collapse of a cloud on the equatorial plane is a case of intense mixing of condensates formed at different temperatures, depending on their separation from the Sun at the moment of their condensation. Thus, Halley's comet is considered to be the archetype of the first group of comets condensed in the vicinity of the planets of Jupiter, and which would be thrown to the periphery of the Solar system through gravitational “collisions”. But the problem these days is even more complex.
Under the influence of gravitational disturbances, comets would therefore be ejected into the Kuiper belt and then scattered into the spherical Oort cloud. From this period of their birth, the comets we observe are objects that remained in this very external environment. Thus, billions of small pieces of primitive nebula orbit the Sun in a cold environment so intense that it allows comets to retain their volatile elements from the moment of their creation. The size of comets that have been observed during their passage into the vicinity of the Sun does not exceed a few hundred meters to several kilometers, which also ensures that most small-sized trans-Neptunian objects were not able to undergo significant heating during the acceleration phase.
Centuria 2, quatrain 46
After the great disaster of mankind, an even greater one is being prepared,
The great mover of the century updates:
Rain, blood, milk, hunger, iron and plague,
Fire is visible in the sky, a long running spark.
The great disaster of mankind, according to decipherers, was, of course, the Second World War. The great mover of the century is the boundary between the 20th and 21st centuries. And at this turn of the century, a “long running spark” (a comet or a large meteorite, an asteroid) was supposed to appear in the sky, the result of which would be everything that is mentioned in the third line. Two more are usually associated with this quatrain.
But the distance to the Sun is so great that the farthest glaciers, the Oort clouds, are more or less exposed to galaxies and other stars, which can slowly change their initial characteristics. Thus, it is not surprising to note that the size and nature of the grains from the studied comets are completely different. Should we attribute the cause to the history of their condensation, or to the history of their recent past, to the more or less long duration which is now taking place near the Sun, or to the past and strong past? lived for a long time very far from the Sun between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, before a gravitational disturbance that created cyclic objects that we can observe with the naked eye thanks to their graceful hairs when they are close to the Sun.
Cent Uria 3, quatrain 34
When the damage to the Sun then occurs,
In broad daylight the monster will be visible:
Everyone will interpret it differently,
The high cost has not been preserved: no one will be ready.
Centuria 6, quatrain 6
Appears to the north
Not far from Cancer is a bearded star:
Susa, Sienna, Boethia, Eretrio,
The great of Rome will die, the night has passed.
In quatrain 34 centuries 3 it is specified that a terrible comet (in the Middle Ages, the largest comets were sometimes designated precisely as “monstrous” - monstrifer) will be seen for the first time in the sky during the full solar eclipse. This “phenomenon” will cause wild panic, which will result in increased food purchases, which will cause a sharp increase in prices. Another poem specifies the place where the comet appears and the region that is particularly affected by it. Susa (Val di Susa, Italy), Sienna (also Italy), Boethia and Eretrio are located in the zone of tectonic faults and are fraught with large earthquakes. “The Great of Rome” is undoubtedly the Pope.
On Dikaya 2, smooth areas are located at the bottom of circular depressions. The Committee then surrounds itself with a very tense atmosphere made up of molecules called maters, which the very low gravity of the object will not be able to contain, it is this atmosphere that is at the beginning of what we call the comet's tail, which is up to 000 km long. This hair actually doubles in size.
The shiny part is made up of dust grains which, combined with sublimation, reflect light. This first part of the tail is strongly curved by the photon flux. It is less visible due to particles charged by the solar wind and is made of molecules called girls. They all arise from the dissociation of more complex molecules, of which only a few are observed. Consequently, comets are composed of 80% mineral grains surrounded by ice rich in organic compounds. The origin of these organic compounds has not yet been discovered: are they contemporaneous with the episode of interstellar cloud “accretion”?
The closest total solar eclipse to the turn of the century in France (the predictor's homeland) was supposed to occur on August 11, 1999. Comet C/1999 H1 Lee, better known as Comet Lee, discovered on April 16, 1999, was ideally suited for the role of executor of the sentence. She got her name from the person who first saw her through a telescope. An employee of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Australia, Stephen Lee, discovered this new celestial body, which had a interesting features. For example, its main tail (a total of two of these were observed on the comet) was directed not towards the Sun, where, according to all the rules, the solar wind should have blown it, but towards it; the second tail, already correct, was much less developed than the first. The comet had truly gigantic size, presumably about 2 thousand kilometers (only one and a half times less than the diameter of the Moon). In addition, it either disappeared from view or reappeared; its orbit was calculated rather poorly, since it often changed speed and direction of movement - “scoured.” When the public learned that the comet would make its closest approach to Earth in September 1999, and it would become possible to see it with the naked eye in August, the traveler was immediately called Comet Nostradamus.
These living fossils, witnesses to our origins, may have been important in the constitution of planetary atmospheres. indeed, there is good reason to think that meteorite and cometary bombardment did not suddenly cease with the cooling phase of the solar system, but that this terminal acceleration after the T-Tauri phase resulted in already formed and differentiated planets, a kind of varnish of early and cold materials, including water and carbon. The role of Murchison-type mineralized carbonaceous minerals may have played a key role, and many people agree that Earth's oceans must owe much to this "late" episode, and perhaps life on Earth would not have occurred without this contribution of organic compounds.
People have lost peace and sleep. Variants of scenarios for the alleged disaster appeared in the press. They all boiled down to something like this. During the solar eclipse on August 11, earthlings will see the comet in all its glory for the first time. Then it will disappear for several weeks, and when it appears again, it will quickly gain a luminosity comparable to that of the Moon. In September, the Earth will pass through the tail of a comet, then a small piece will separate from it (about 400 meters in size, that is, ten times more Tunguska meteorite). The fragment will fall into Atlantic Ocean in the Azores region. The energy of the fall will be such that everything within a radius of 200 kilometers from the epicenter will be destroyed immediately. The impact will generate an earthquake measuring up to 14 on the Richter scale, which in turn will cause powerful tsunami. States such as Great Britain and Spain will simply be washed away. The first earthquake initiates other, secondary ones, which will occur a few days after the start of the disaster. In addition, at the site of the fall of the fragment, several super-powerful tornadoes will be born, with speeds of up to 800 km/h. These tornadoes will move towards west coast Atlantic. Hurricanes will lift billions of tons of water and ocean salt to a height of up to 50 kilometers. The ozone layer in the area where they pass will be completely destroyed. The clouds will cover the sky, and real brine will pour out of them - water with large flakes of salt. This will be the “rain” with “milk” that is mentioned in the quatrain. Gradually, nuclear winter will come on Earth, and then - according to the text - “blood”, “hunger”, “iron” (in the sense of war) and plague.
Parts of a comet: Comte Hale-Bopp. Orbital elements of comets and asteroids such as eccentricity, inclination, semi-axis, etc. May be changed when these celestial bodies pass close to major planets. Because of this, these orbital elements are only valid for a limited period of time. It is recommended to update at intervals between two and six months. Thus, software will be able to generate secrets and precise trajectories of these objects.
There you will find the orbital elements famous comets that are not currently visible, such as Halley's Comet. You don't need to do separate updates for these comets. The database for this group of asteroids is already contained in regular updates, so you do not need to make separate updates for these asteroids.
The silence of NASA, which did not want to talk about the harmful comet, added fuel to the fire. Even the sworn statements of numerous astronomers who claimed that the comet would not fly closer to us than 120 million kilometers (this is only one and a half times less than the distance from the Earth to the Sun) could not calm the people down. Several scientists, among whom was a Russian professor, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, leading researcher at the Novosibirsk United Institute of Geology, Geophysics and Mineralogy SB RAS Alexey Dmitriev, formed the Millennium group. The group's task was to prepare earthlings for a dignified end to civilization. One of the founders of the group, Jimmy McKenney, developed the theory of cometary plasma discharge. According to McKenney, Comet Lee's tail is turned toward the Sun because it is not actually a "dirty snowball" as NASA hoaxers have portrayed it, but rather an electromagnetic object with a high charge. Like a giant vacuum cleaner, such a comet wanders around the Galaxy from star to star, feeding on plasma from them. When such a comet finds a suitable star, its movement slows down, its charge begins to gradually fall, and a stream of ionized dust rushes towards the star itself, which we see as an “irregular tail.” It is fundamentally impossible to predict the behavior of such a machine, and therefore, according to members of the group, nothing will prevent the comet from turning towards Earth. According to Alexey Dmitriev, such a comet does not even have to fall to Earth. A body of such a high mass, simply passing nearby, can cause such gravitational disturbances that no one will find it small. Firstly, the orbits of various celestial bodies, from small asteroids to planets. Secondly, earthquakes, storms and volcanic eruptions may begin on the planet itself.
All files downloaded above contain the orbital elements of comets and asteroids. In most cases, these calculations give accurate results. However, charged orbital elements are cumulative, meaning they change over time and are only valid for a limited period of time, and Coelix calculations do not take into account the effects of gravitational perturbations from objects other than the Sun, such as planets and large asteroids, so in some cases there may be a gap, especially when a comet or asteroid passes close enough to Earth.
However, August 11 passed, an eclipse passed, and no one really saw the comet (except through binoculars). Nothing bad happened in September either. Soon the comet disappeared from sight again and was forgotten about.
Next in line was new option explanations of terrible quatrains. Its author was Ronald Welch, a well-known Nostradamus scholar in the United States. In his book “Nostradamus’s Comet,” he compared 16 quatrains and came to the conclusion that the catastrophe should take place a little after the millennium, namely in September 2004.
These ephemerides give very accurate positions that take into account gravitational disturbances. It has a large hair band and approaches the star and can develop a tail. Thus, heat and solar wind can “awaken” its core. Astronomers and aficionados around the world have already aimed telescopes at capturing the spectacular images, awaiting the development of a pipeline to study the composition. Comets are actually “fossils,” ancient remnants of a young solar system that can reveal a lot about its formation.
On this moment it is presented to targets with an extensive and light green color: “The color is due to biatomic carbon, which, under the influence of solar radiation, in the emptying of space, emits this color,” adds Masi. has already captured several images of the comet thanks to collaborations with telescopes from different corners of the Earth.
Centuria 6, quatrain 67
One unlike others will appear in the great Empire,
Far from humanity, even more from happiness,
Guided by one who recently got out of bed,
The state is approaching great misfortune.
The great misfortune, according to Welch, is the Third World War, which will occur immediately after the fall of the comet. For Welch, this is not a comet at all, but asteroid 4179, aka 1989 AC, aka Toutatis, discovered back in 1989 and included in the list of potentially dangerous celestial bodies. Toutatis was named after the Celtic god of war. Outwardly, it looks like a giant peanut. The dimensions of the asteroid are 4.6 by 2.29 by 1.92 km, weight - 2.5 billion kg, average flight speed - 39,600 km/h (11 km/s). The asteroid consists of two touching blocks of rock.
This is the latest discovery by Australian amateur computer and astronomer Terry Lovejoy, a renowned comet hunter, and is the sixth "notch" confirmed on March 13. But on these mornings it is visible with the help of small binoculars to the star of the constellation Pegasus, shortly before dawn.
Its magnitude is slightly below visibility with the naked eye. For both, we recommend taking the opportunity to visit one of the many astronomical observers to enjoy the best show, hoping for clear skies. This is visible in the sky these days even with a small telescope.
Welch's forecast was as follows. The asteroid, approaching the Earth at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers on September 29, 2004 (only four times the distance from the Earth to the Moon), will disintegrate into two parts under the influence of our combined gravity with the Moon. One of the parts will continue its great space journey, and the second will fall to Earth in the Aegean Sea region, 80 kilometers from Athens.
A comet in the sky, especially bright enough to look good to the naked eye, presents a formidable astronomical show, one of the most beautiful the starry sky has to offer. The year that has just begun, for a particular combination of events, will be a year rich in these events.
Of the comets in our solar system, there are many thousands, maybe millions. From time to time, due to the gravitational effect of the outer planets, some of them move out of their own balance and venture into solar system, attracted by the Sun. It moved to perihelion on November 29, and in December it was visible until dawn; then it moved into the constellations Auriga and Toro and became visible in the evening; should go to the right of the constellation Orion in mid-January. To observe this, you need to go to a somewhat dark place, perhaps a hill or mountain, and use a small telescope, at least 8-10 cm in diameter, with a large eyepiece and low magnification.
However, 2004 passed quietly. The asteroid did not fall apart, but flew past. The next dangerous approach to it, according to scientists, should take place no earlier than 2562.
However, maybe Nostradamus had in mind the turn of the 21st and 22nd centuries? We already have several asteroid candidates for this period. For example, asteroid 2002 VU17, which on November 17
The year 2099 will fly from us at a distance of a thousand kilometers. This is slightly more than a tenth of the Earth's radius; many satellites fly much higher. Stone block VU17 (diameter - 40 m, weight - 73 million kg) is comparable to half of the Tunguska meteorite. Another candidate for the title of “intercentury comet Nostradamus,” asteroid 1998 HJ3, is much more serious (diameter - 694 m, weight - 450 billion kg). It should pass on April 30, 2100, approximately 2 thousand kilometers from our planet. If HJ3 deviates slightly from its path and meets the Earth, the energy of the encounter will be equal to 3,900 megatons (195,000 bombs dropped on Hiroshima). But we still have to live until that time. Can we do it, that’s the question...