It was just discovered last Friday. By then it was already inside Earth’s orbit. That is both crazy & wild! These days, with so many eyes — many automated — we tend to spot comets way, way, way out, before they even get as close as Jupiter. So, this was very unexpected.
It is NOT a sungrazer — which are MY favorites. But, it gets PRETTY close to the Sun at perihelion.
Folks are HOPING that we might get quite the SHOW. (See below) That would be quite the BONUS.
That ‘LiveScience‘ article from a few days ago totally floored me. That statement is SO BLATANTLY WRONG. Amazing. I guess these ‘publications’ don’t have editors.
Just stagers I that anybody, with a modicum of scientific background, could even THINK that 71 years is a long orbital period for a comet. WOW. Just defies credulity. Even Neptune, which is in our Solar System, has an orbital period of 164.8 years.
Amazing. I feel bad for those that read this WITHOUT realizing that it is pure garbage.
Click to ENLARGE. [I have been accused, often, of being too laid-back during presentations. But, when you have done as many as I have, it is but second nature. Just muscle memory.]Click image to access the ‘Laconia Rotary’ Facebook post.
This was a short, 20-minute presentation (which went on for a bit longer). This video is not of the live presentation. It was ‘taped’ (& you should be glad of that).
Instead, this is my PowerPoint presentation made into a YouTube video set to music. It is just under 2.5 minutes. So, not too painful to watch.
This is NOT one of my full-blown, 1-hour (+) comet presentations. It was meant to be short, quick & with an emphasis on C/2022 E3 (ZTF). So, please don’t take this as one of my usual, in-depth comet presentations. I will, now that I have done this, make one of those too. OK?
Click to ENLARGE. From the EXCELLENT ‘The Sky Live‘ (such a wonderful resource).
Click to ENLARGE. The title slide of my C/2022 E3 (ZTF) PowerPoint presentation.
I went out TWICE tonight — about 4.5 hours apart. The first was around 7:30pm. I drove 4-miles to the top of a hill to get above the treeline. Took a pair of BIG, powerful 17×70 binoculars with me. I spent about 30 minutes scanning the general area. Nothing.
Then went out again around midnight. Was out for about 40 minutes. Used a second pair of binoculars — not as powerful. Checked the sky map multiple times. I was looking in the right area. Couldn’t miss the moon & Mars. But, still nothing. It was bitterly cold. Might try again tomorrow night.
To claim that it visited 50,000 years ago is pure speculation — sensationalism & IGNORANCE on the part of the media.
Yes, it currently has an estimated orbital period of ~50,000 years. But, if you check Wikipedia or any other semi-reliable source you will find that this is CLEARLY marked — INBOUND.
We ONLY know that it currently has an estimated orbital period of ~50,000 based on what we have seen so far of its orbit.
There is no guarantee, whatsoever, that it has made this trip before.
Most of these non-periodic comets (as designated by the “C/” at the front of its official name) are SINGLE-APPARITION comets or 1st time comets. In other words, they haven’t made this trip, i.e., enter the inner solar system to go around the Sun.
Yes, these comets are likely to have existed since the time the Solar System came to be 4.5 billion years ago. But, that doesn’t mean that they started whizzing around on the orbital paths that bring them this close to the sun as of that time. They tend to stay in a far, far out circular obit way out there in the ‘Oort Cloud‘.
So, don’t just buy into this 50,000 year claim. We just don’t know. It is sheer speculation.
Oh, we also can’t be sure it will be back in 50,000 years!
From JPL. Click to ENLARGE. Annotations are mine. Note, it is not even coming as close as Saturn — & Saturn is a long, long, long way out. See, you can’t even see Earth’s orbit at this scale.
Yes, C/2014 UN271 is big & it is entering the planetary region of our Solar System. But, it is on an orbit that keeps it way, way, way, way away from the Earth. Please, please study that diagram above. Note that its orbit keeps it even further away from the Sun & Earth than even Saturn — & Saturn (on average) is 840 million miles away. Nearly 9.5 times the Earth-Sun distance! Let me even say it in Light Years to express that it is NOT close — 0.00015 light years.
It is NOT — I repeat ‘NOT’ — hurtling towards the Earth.
It is not even hurtling towards the Sun.
It is way out there, 840 million miles away. [The Sun, in comparison, is 90 million miles away.]
And just in case you are wondering, I do know a thing or two (or four) about comets. SMILE. And that was my 5th book on comets.
Yes, it is mega-exciting BUT let’s not get carried away. This is the first body that has been identified from pouring over the huge amount of imagery obtained, 2014 to 2018, from the (so called) ‘Dark Energy Survey‘. So, there very well might be quite a few bodies like this — with similar, highly-elongated orbits.
I am not convinced as yet that it is a bona fide comet. For it to be a comet, it, at a minimum, must sport a coma. A tail (or two (or three)) would be nice (& a bonus) — but not mandatory. But, we have to have a coma, i.e., the fuzzy shroud that surrounds the nucleus of the comet. The coma is formed when the sun’s radiation (mainly the heat) starts to sublimate (vaporize) icy matter from the comet’s body. I don’t think C/2014 UN271 comes close enough to the sun for sublimation to occur. No sublimation –> No coma. No coma –> NOT a comet. Simple as that. Without a coma it is an asteroid, a dwarf planet or minor planet.
