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The nucleus of a comet is visible in the center of a diffuse coma, whose slightly asymmetrical shape forms the pressure of solar radiation.
The Gabblo space telescope and other terrestrial and space observatories conducted a large-scale surveillance campaign of Comet 46P / Virtanen, which became the brightest comet of 2018. year, when it came together with Earth. These observations allow us to learn more about the structure of coma and to understand how its composition changes under the influence of solar radiation, according to a press release published on the NASA website, informs UkrMedia.
Kometa 46P / Virtanen was opened in January 1948 by the American astronomer Carl. Virtanen It is short-lived and revolves around the sun for 5.4 years. On December 12, the comet reached its perihelion and on December 16, it flew to the smallest distance from the Earth (11.6 million kilometers) to make all its observations. In the near future, the 46P / Wirthaneen chandelier will fluctuate between 4.1 and 4.9 magnitudes, making it an ideal target for amateur observations. To learn more about the location of this comet in the night sky and the best time to watch, you can read more about the Astro Channel video blog post.
Usually, the interior of the comet is not available for ground observations; 46P / Virtanen's rapprochement with our planet provides an excellent opportunity to study in detail the layer of gas pollen surrounding a comet's nucleus, in particular, in order to understand the composition of the comet nucleus and the chemical processes that take place in a coma under the influence of solar radiation. The monitoring campaign included the Chandra Space Telescope, the Fast Gamma Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and various terrestrial observatories, including the ALMA radio telescope system, which has the smallest details from a coma.
On a photograph taken by the WAB3 camera (large-field camera 3) of the "Hubble" telescope in the optical range on December 13, when the comet was at a distance of 12 million kilometers from the Earth, the nucleus of the comet is visible at the center of the diffuse coma, whose slightly asymmetrical shape creates the pressure of solar radiation. The SOFIA Observatory made a comet observation on December 16 and 17 in order to track the distribution of water vapor in coma.
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