23 February 2024
3 Read the min
Striking Tail Star This April’s Total Solar Eclipse
The comet 12P/Pons-Brooks will make its closest approach to this April-after being treated as a full solar eclipse of North America
12P/Pons-Broks is a periodic comet of the Halley type, which is a 71-year orbit period. He was discovered in 1812 and then healed during the passages in 1883 and 1954. During the upcoming passage in April 2024, it is expected to be illuminated to a visible magnitude 4.5 (visible to the naked eye).
This article is a special report The total solar eclipse that can be seen from the parts of the United States, Mexico and Canada on 8 April 2024.
On April 8, the US and Canada will be treated with a striking total solar eclipse, a second eclipse, which can be widely seen in the US in less than decade. However, this time he can photograph a comet star screen.
Officially known as Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, the dirty ice ball was discovered in 1812. The comet last lasts a little more than 71 years in the orbit of the sun on a road that crosses Neptune’s orbit and returns from the inner solar system. During the current transition of the comet 12P, professional and amateur astronomers observed a series of explosions from the Hatling Ice Ball, which won the nicknames such as “Millennium Falcon” and “Devil’s Tailed Star”, which was seen to have given horns.
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“This history is one of the brightest comets of this history, Ros says Rosita Kokotanekova, who is a planetary scientist at the Bulgarian Academy Academy Astronomy and National Astronomy Observatory Institute.
And on April 21, the comet will make the closest approach to the sun after two weeks of the total solar eclipse. The timing means that the comet will appear about 25 degrees away from the sun during integrity. (Your cramped fist, which is held in arm length, can be used to measure about 10 degrees in the sky.)
Credit: Katie Peek; Source: NASA (Eclipse Track Data)
It is still unclear how visible 12p can be during integrity. Although the sun will be blocked at that time, the sky will not reach real night tones – it will be more like twilight – and the exterior atmosphere of our home star or Corona will shine. Based on existing observations, during integrity, the comet can barely see with the naked eye, or the sky observers may need binoculars to detect it.
Orum I don’t want people to be disappointed if they don’t see a comet, Kok Kokotanekova says. “If people expect to see something extremely bright in a completely dark sky, I think it will be more difficult than that, unless they are very lucky to have an explosion.”
However, if the comet cooperates, it may look much brighter. The reason for this is that the Comet 12P is known for the dramatic explosions, while the ice ball loses a significant amount of material, which is both an ice ball, both gas and dust. This increases the blurred halo size around the comet and causes it to look brighter.
Kokotanekova, Comet 12P’den, “some great explosions had,” he says. Scientists are not sure what they are, adding to them – some researchers have theory that cracks were opened in the iced body of the comet, or potentially the rocks on the rough surface collapsed. “A very unknown region, or he says. “That’s why we’re interested in every comet that does this.”
Whatever the reason for the explosions of 12P, well -timed someone can make the appearance of Comet 12p striking from integrity. However, our limited records of the comet’s previous close approaches to Sun show that the explosions may be reduced as we approach our star – another puzzle for scientists to take over the coming months.
Although each of the total solar eclipses and bright -tailed stars are relatively rare phenomena, the comet will not be the first person who appears during integrity. A historian, for example, reported that he discovered a different comet stars during the total solar eclipse in CE 418. And since the end of the 1800s, observers often saw the “sunbathing” comets, which have passed on about 850,000 miles of the star. Particularly remarkable, in 1997, the comet Hale-Bopp made his closest approach to Earth just two weeks after total solar eclipse. We’ll have to wait a little longer to see how to compare 12p/Pons-Brooks.
