July 14, 2012
96P/Machholz 1
One of The Brickmuppets Crack Team of Science Babes comes to us with news of a most interesting comet. How interesting you ask?
"It's THIS interesting." she signs.
It seems that this comet is distinctly lacking in some of the elements usually found in comets like certain carbon compounds. This has some
interesting implications...
It must have had a very unusual origin and might even have formed in another solar system probably very different from our own.
Yes this comet may well have come from outside our solar system.
Via Spaceweather, there is an
essay here on this comet and a few objects that may share the same origin.
As for
looking at it, Pixy and his fellow antipodeans have a good view via telescope if they so choose.
For Northern hemisphere observers, the comet is unobservable before
perihelion, but is viewable near the end of the month when it also
appears low down in the evening sky. It remains observable although
rapidly fading in brightness into August.
In any event, it's viewable via
SOHO and is being covered at
Space Weather so you might want to take a look at this lonely traveler...it might be very far from home indeed.
'Science Babe' is actually Shizune Hachimaki from Katawa Shoujo.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
05:43 PM
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1
Is it a closed orbit or an open orbit?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sat Jul 14 17:50:54 2012 (+rSRq)
2
It's in a closed orbit but really off the plane of the elliptic. It's a short period comet that was discovered in '89.
The linked essay suggests it may be associated with (ie: broke off from) a very strange, very fast comet that appeared in 1490 and was never seen again.
Other possibilities mooted to account for its odd composition include an Oort cloud origin and that it may be almost 'burned ou', but in both cases it ought to have a similar composition to other comets spawned from our little star.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Jul 14 20:30:39 2012 (e9h6K)
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July 08, 2012
Who Put The Seams In the Rainbows?
Via Transterrestrial Musings comes an interesting story on the differences between languages expression of colors. One thing that interested me, the old story I'd been told about Japanese stoplights (that they were red and blue prior to 1945) is probably false.
...But in Japanese, vegetables are ao-mono, literally blue things. Green
apples? They’re blue too. As are the first leaves of spring, if you go
by their Japanese name. In English, the term green is sometimes used to
describe a novice, someone inexperienced. In Japanese, they’re ao-kusai,
literally they ‘smell of blue’...
You know...I
really ought to have caught that.
(Source unknown)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
01:01 PM
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1
I think that generally we in the west consider a rainbow to have five colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue). In Japan they think it's seven: red, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, blue, purple. (Your picture doesn't accurately represent either side...)
The inclusion of purple is strange, because purple isn't really a color. All the others can be represented by a single frequency of light, but there is no single frequency of light which looks purple.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Jul 8 18:49:27 2012 (+rSRq)
2
I remember when I was learning Japanese being told that the word for Blue represented a color leaning more towards green than what we think of as blue.
Also, I remember reading that it was DaVinci who proposed our division of the spectrum into 7 colors (not five). Remember the Mnemonic "Roy G. Biv" Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Jul 8 21:36:13 2012 (cZPoz)
3
Your picture doesn't accurately represent either side
But it DOES accurately represent Hello Kitty riding a unicorn that is farting a rainbow and thus it is awesome.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Jul 9 11:11:52 2012 (e9h6K)
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