Monday, November 5, 2012

Breaking up can be easy to do


According to reports, Comet Hergenrother, one of the little comets that keeps circling around near the sun (a periodic comet) rather than the big rare ones, was observed getting brighter a couple of weeks ago by the astronomers that do that type of thing.  It turns out that the brightening was indicative of a somewhat rare to observe, but probably fairly common in the solar system scale of things, cometary breakup.  Comet Hergenrother's main body broke into four smaller bodies. 

Nothing to worry about impact-wise, but interesting to watch.

Scientists monitor Hergenrother's breakup

Comet Hergenrother puts on a show

This picture of Comet Hergenrother supposedly shows four chunks, but I'm only sure of three



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