Don't know. I have the site bookmarked and go look at the new picture every day.
Here's the ARCHIVE SITE with EVERY PICTURE from EVERY DAY starting June 1995.
Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Here is today's pic.
Posted on 01/20/2011 5:39:20 AM PST by Red Badger
A recent storm of small comets that pelted the sun could herald the coming a much bigger icy visitor, astronomers say.
Since its launch in 1995, NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, orbiter has captured pictures of 2,000 comets as they've flown past the sun.
Most of these comets are so-called sungrazers, relatively tiny comets whose orbits bring them so near the sun that they are often vaporized within hours of discovery. (See a picture of a sungrazer spied in October.)
The sun-watching telescope usually picks up one sungrazer every few days. But between December 13 and 22, SOHO saw more than two dozen sungrazers appear and disintegrate.
Seeing "25 comets in just ten days, that's unprecedented," Karl Battams, of the United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "It was crazy!"
According to Battams and colleagues, the comet swarm could be forerunner fragments from a much larger parent comet that may be headed along a similar path. And such a large icy body coming so near the sun would result in a spectacular sky show.
Sun-Kissing Comet "Granddaddy" on the Way?
Despite becoming a leading comet hunter, SOHO was initially designed to study the sun. For example, one camera on the probe uses a device called a coronagraph to block out the main body of the sun so that it can see fainter features in the star's upper atmosphere.
(Related: "Sun Erupts—Epic Blast Seen by NASA Solar Observatory." With video)
As it happens, this setup also allows SOHO to spot tiny, house-size comets taking their death plunges.
Over the years, the number of sungrazing comets detected by SOHO has increased, from 69 in 1997 to 200 in 2010.
Even after accounting for more participation from comet hunters and efforts to optimize images for comet-spotting, the numbers appear to show a significant increase in sungrazers, the astronomers say.
(Related: "Weird Asteroid Really a Crusty Old Comet?")
And the recent flurry of kamikaze comets may be pieces from a larger body similar to the Ikeya-Seki comet of 1965, Battams and colleagues say.
The granddaddy of all sungrazing comets, the three-mile-wide (five-kilometer-wide) core of Ikeya-Seki swept within 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) of the solar surface.
Rather than vaporizing, the large comet survived its close encounter and whipped around the sun, becoming so bright in Earth's sky that, for a time, it was visible during the day.
Since there were no space-based solar probes at the time, no one knows whether that event was preceded by a storm of smaller comets.
Comet Storm Remnants of a Broken Body?
But according to comet hunter David Levy, the coming of a large sungrazer is just speculation for now. Comets in general are quite fragile and break apart easily, so this comet storm may simply be the last gasp of a bigger body that no longer exists, he said.
"Most of the comets that SOHO has discovered have been rather small and are probably little fragments that have spilt off of much larger comets that had previous encounters with the sun," said Levy, co-discoverer of the famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that hit Jupiter in 1994.
(Related: "Third Jupiter Fireball Spotted—Sky-Watching Army Needed?")
Comet expert Don Yeomans, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, agrees.
"I would be surprised if there really is a larger object waiting to come in and take center stage and these smaller objects are its precursers," Yeomans said. "It's more likely these could be the remnants of a much larger object that broke up and is no longer with us."
The only way to know for sure, Yeomans said, is to watch and see if the rate of increase in sungrazers continues, which he admits would be "pretty amazing and unusual."
He also warns that if there is another Ikeya-Seki barreling toward the sun, sky-watchers shouldn't hold their collective breath. After all, if you trace the orbital paths of the comet storm, any parent body would be coming from the farthest reaches of the solar system.
"We are talking about long waiting periods" until such a comet neared the sun, he said, "possibly anywhere upward of thousands to millions of years."
>>”We are talking about long waiting periods” until such a comet neared the sun, he said, “possibly anywhere upward of thousands to millions of years.”<<
This expert astronomer and my dog are on the same level of intellect.
Don't know. I have the site bookmarked and go look at the new picture every day.
Here's the ARCHIVE SITE with EVERY PICTURE from EVERY DAY starting June 1995.
Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Here is today's pic.
Don't you think it has more to with our 'awareness' that it is happening, rather than how long it has been happening?
Sorry, I don’t buy the Mayans account as to when the end will come.
If they were so damned smart, how come they aren’t still around and how come more sports teams don’t use them as their mascots?
She’ll be commin’ round the mountain when she comes..............
NOPE.
Chinese had excellent astronomers for many millenia.
They kept excellent records. So did some other cultures for less long periods of time.
And, certainly Pentecostals et al have paid attention as it’s a significant prophetic marker for the END TIMES. So, I’ve paid attention all my life. Yet, in the last 10 years, dramatic events have escalated in frequency and degree of drama as well as in unusual extremely rare naturel—some unprecedented as far as we can tell.
Thanks for the ping!
That’s just a stunning picture.
Psalm 19:1-2
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
Good question. I miss those.
That may be. But they didn't have a spacecraft that orbited the Sun and could take pictures that reveal things THEY could never see from the surface of the Earth.
We SEE more SUICIDAL COMETS hitting the SUN because we have an instrument that gives us the ability.
Heck, it wasn't that long ago that we had NO IDEA that comets went on suicidal missions to the Sun.
How many COMETS did the 'ancient' CHINESE have records of where they saw it CRASH into the BACK side of the Sun?
Reporter: “How come the Mayan calender ends in December 2012?”
Mayan: “When does your calendar end?”
Only our global awareness has increased. There were always Earthquakes. But we didn't 'know' about most of them. There were always volcanoes, but we didn't 'know' about most of them.
I think eclipses used to cause the 'public' to exhibit a greater degree of DRAMA, than they do now. They still occurred with the same exact frequency.
How many pyramids are there in Egypt?
What are those of?
I’m not an expert on Chinese Astronomy.
I know they have some incredible records of incredible events.
I don’t think that the fact of our satellites alters the END TIMES PROPHETIC PREDICTION aspect in the least.
THAT’S merely part of the SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS.
One Scripture even interestingly notes:
YEA THOUGH THEY BUILD THEIR NESTS AMONGST THE STARS, YET WILL I BRING THEM DOWN.
. . .
Certainly we have little to no reliable history of mortals doing that before our era.
I don’t know that I have anything else to add ATT.
I think you are leaning over so far from a TYPE I ERROR that you are virtually sucking up to a TYPE II ERROR, virtually certain.
Beautiful shots.
1:4 If thou dost go up high as an eagle, And if between stars thou dost set thy nest, From thence I bring thee down, An affirmation of Jehovah. [Young's literal translation]
1:4 Though you mount on high as the eagle, and though your nest is set among the stars, I will bring you down from there, says Yahweh.[World English Bible]
If you want the full impact of the verse, Young's literal translation is it!
Great.
Interesting.
Particularly given that purportedly
AMERICA . . . ?The Eagle?
has nests on the moon, Mars and a moon of Jupiter or some such.
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