Comet Siding Spring 2016

The dense inner coma reached the surface of the planet or nearly so.

Comet siding spring 2016.

The comet was visible with binoculars until january 2010. The first finder chart has a field of view of 50 degrees while the second one has a field of view of 10 degrees. C 2007 q3 siding spring is an oort cloud comet that was discovered by donna burton in 2007 at siding spring observatory in new south wales australia. Siding spring came within 1 2 astronomical units of earth and 2 25 au of the sun on october 7 2009.

At the time of its discovery comet siding spring was farther from the sun than jupiter about 7 2 times farther away from the sun than earth. Comet siding spring s nucleus a nugget of ice and rock measuring no more than half a kilometer about 1 3 mile is small but the coma is expansive stretching out a million kilometers. The dense inner coma reached the surface of the planet or nearly so. 10 march 2016 astronomy now the close encounter between comet siding spring and mars flooded the planet with an invisible tide of charged particles from the comet s coma.

19 comet c 2013 a1 comet siding spring will pass within about 87 000 miles 139 500 km of mars. Comet c 2013 a1 siding spring will make a very close flyby of mars on oct. Nasa s extensive fleet of science assets particularly those orbiting and roving mars have front row seats to image and study this once in a lifetime flyby. At the time of discovery it was 7 2 au from the sun and located in the constellation lepus comet c 2013 a1 probably took millions of years to come from the oort cloud.

Mcnaught achieved this triumph on january 3 2013 using the 0 5 meter 20 inch uppsala schmidt telescope at siding spring observatory in new south wales australia. Close comet flyby threw mars magnetic field into chaos march 9 2016 the close encounter between comet siding spring and mars flooded the planet with an invisible tide of charged particles from the comet s coma. Mcnaught at siding spring observatory using the 0 5 meter 20 in uppsala southern schmidt telescope. Below we provide comet c 2013 a1 siding spring finder charts showing where the object is right now in the sky with respect to the brightest stars.

Images of the comet taken in march 2010 by n howes using the faulkes telescope. When comet siding spring passed mars the comet s coma washed over the planet for several hours with the dense inner coma perhaps reaching the surface.