Beginning on the 16th of February there will be a visitor in Maine’s evening sky. The newly discovered Comet Lulin will be passing close by our planet Earth and viewable from backyards through binoculars, or in telescopes like the Clark refractor at the Maynard F. Jordan Observatory. Lulin was discovered in 2007. It will pass by Saturn in the constellation of Leo on the 23rd of February and will also drift by the bright star Regulus, on the 27th of February. It will be its brightest and closest to the Earth during the last week of February.If it surprises astronomers and is brighter than expected, it might be possible to see it with the naked eye.
Go ahead and when you download the audio upload it onto your ipod, mp3 player, cd player, or any other audio device. Then take it outside and listen as it guides you to Comet Lulin.
This comet was discovered on images taken at the Lulin Observatory in Nantou, Taiwan on July 11, 2007, by Quanzhi Ye from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Since its discovery it has been observed by astronomers all over the world in China, Taiwan, Australia, Spain, and here in the United States who have plotted the orbit of the comet to a reasonably good precision as it has orbited closer and brighter. Lulin is a one-shot comet traveling a hyperbolic path that will carry it out of the solar system, never to return. It passed closest to the sun on January 10th, but it will appear larger as it comes to its closest distance from Earth on February 24th . Lulin then will be 38 million miles away. The orbit falls entirely outside Earth’s so there is no chance of a perilous encounter.
Orbit diagrams in red/blue stereo make it easy to see the nested orbits of comet and planets. (Click for full size and get out your funky glasses.)
The February approach is fortunate as it will be accessible from Maine sites, and the Jordan Observatory will be open for special comet watch hours during those weeks. This month’s star chart shows the path of Comet Lulin during this period.
What is a comet?!
Comets are large balls of ice (primarily water, methane, ammonia or carbon dioxide) androck.Most comets are hidden from our eyes, far from the center of the Solar System in one of two reservoirs: the Kuiper belt or the Oort Cloud. The Kuiper belt lies outside the orbit of Neptune. The first Kuiper belt object was detected in 1992. Most periodic comets, such as Halley’s Comet, come from the Kuiper belt. The Oort Cloud is much farther away, up to 50 000 AU from the Sun. The Oort Cloud is the source of ‘non-periodic’comets. These comets are actually periodic, but their orbital period may be more than one million years!The closer the comet gets tothe Sun, the brighter it becomes. The Sun’s heat vaporizes the comet’s ice, and the solar wind blows the vaporized gas and dust into tails than can be more than 100 km in length. Comets have 2 tails - one gas, one dust. The gas tail is straight and points directly away from the Sun, while the dust tail can be curved. The gas tail is usually longer. If the Earth’s orbit passes through this comet debris, a meteor shower takes place.
