Here and Now’s space-watcher Kelly Beatty joins us to talk about a rare celestial event. Tonight is the night for Earthlings to get a good look at the comet called Lulin as it zips by our planet. Astronomers call Lulin an oddball because unlike most comets it circles the sun in clock-wise motion and from Earth appears to be chasing its own tail. Beatty will also tell us about the growing problem of space debris in Earth’s orbit and what space agency officials are planning to do about it.
Where to look for Comet Lulin. (Courtesy Sky & Telescope)
It would be amazing that this ‘dirty snowball’ is chasing its own tail. This pop culture report on Here and Now did very little to further general understanding of comets. It largely did a disservice. Comets, having been seen and even impacted with, are not ‘dirty snowballs’ no matter how alluring that picture is, no matter how great that sounds on air. If the mechanism that created the tail was heating from the sun there’d be little evidence as rocks, even when heated, are rocks. This is an electrical effect off the comet moving from the negative edges of the solar system towards the positively charged sun.
Posted by Bill, on February 23rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm