It’s called Lovejoy, it’s a small comet that a fellow in Australia of that name recently discovered, and it has a date with a star. Our star. A Kreutz sungrazer it is, member of a family of comets on about the same orbital course and that are apparently remnants of a big comet that got too close centuries ago and sundered itself. This one is due to not quite reach the photosphere , or visible “surface” of the sun. It’ll miss that by about 87,000 miles. But it is apparently doomed by its fate to skim past well within the dazzling and hot corona.

Its likely demise is due at about 7 pm Eastern US time today. That’s after sunset, but we on the West Coast might be able to glimpse things during close approach, and those back East can perhaps take a peek at its home stretch. News outlets warn that staring at the sun, even near sunset, is not smart. Watching a webcast is best. (See Nat’l Geo story below for a link to one).

We’ll update tomorrow if anything newsy occurs. In the meantime, some curtain raisers. The image above is the latest from ESA’s and NASA’s jointly  sponsored 16-year-old SOHO satellite.

Stories:

• Space.com – Clara Moskowitz:Comet to Make Death dive Through Sun Thursday ;
• Discovery News – Ian O’Neill: Comet Lovejoy to ‘Play Chicken’ With the Sun ;
• National Geographic – Andrew Fazekas: Death-Diving Comet May Be Visible to Naked Eye; Ah, usage. This says it will be seen ‘careening through the solar atmosphere..”  Digression alert! Some of you know where I’m going here. Which is alas poor  careen, we knew you well. Once it meant to lean a ship on its stem on a beach for cleaning or repair. Somehow it got mixed up with to career. That became to follow a wildly erratic course. On occasion, one does see the verb “to career” which covers not only wild courses, but mathematically pure ones such as the one due for this small comet. Never mind all that, really, as Mr. Fazekas’s story is otherwise satisfying, and includes a link with continuous updates on the event, at the Sungrazing comet website.
• Space.com via Christian Science Monitor – Mike Wall:Comet’s death plunge into sun will be well-documented ;
• PC Magazine – Tony Hoffman: Watch Online as a Bright Comet Makes a Run at the Sun ;
• Gizmodo

And an excellent blog account of the comet’s discovery by a newspaper’s photo editor:

• Astro Bob – Bob King (Duluth News Tribune photographer/photo editor): Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy discovers rare sungrazing comet, with subsequent updates at the site, the latest one being Comet Lovejoy rages against the dying of the light ;

Grist for the Mill: NASA Goddard Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2011 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.