Comments on: The Sun fries a comet and we got to watch

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:53:29 +0000

@ 11 & 12,

The sky is a hemisphere, so for the sun to fill half of it (area-wise) it would have to appear 120 degrees wide. Therefore the distance of the comet from the center of the sun would be (2/√3) * R☉, and its distance from the surface of the sun would be (2/√3 - 1) * R☉ = 0.1547 * 696,342 km = 107,724 km.

Ha! Phil was DEAD ON.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:55:10 +0000

@13. Dragonchild : Cheers. Good work there.

@10. Nigel Depledge : Thanks for that explanation too.

By: Better than Average Links – Week of Jan 15, 2012 | Scrub Physics

Better than Average Links – Week of Jan 15, 2012 | Scrub Physics — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:42:44 +0000

[...] Astronomy covers a comet being destroyed by the Sun, and we have front row [...]

By: JohnDoe

JohnDoe — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:28:04 +0000

@Boingo: I never get the right video on the front page, but always to matching video if I open just a specific post.

By: A Comet's Death Caught on Camera | Surprising Science

A Comet's Death Caught on Camera | Surprising Science — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:11:36 +0000

[...] evaporated away,” said Schrijver, the lead author of the paper. As the Bad Astronomy blog points out, that speed means it would have crossed the width of the United States in about 8 [...]

By: Dragonchild

Dragonchild — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:56:58 +0000

@8. Messier Tidy Upper
The lyrics are mine; I just parodied the first verse of Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science” from the point of view of the poor, doomed comet. If you haven’t heard it before I’m sure you can find it on YouTube — if SOPA/PIPA doesn’t shut it down!

It came to mind because Phil wrote, “Science!” One of the ongoing effects in the song is the voice of late, great Magnus Pyke shouting that word.

By: dcsohl

dcsohl — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:26:06 +0000

Well, no… if you assume the surface of an object to be a smooth sphere then the only way for it to occupy 180 degrees is to actually be standing ON that object. When Phil says “half the sky”, as he does here and as he does in the “boiling planet” post, I’ve been assuming he meant 90 degrees. But you say 134, which doesn’t fit any definition of “half the sky”.

Must be poetic license. Phil, I’m gonna need to see that license — when was the last time you had it renewed?

By: JMW

JMW — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:26:11 +0000

Now imagine the Sun filling half the sky. That’s what that comet saw.

Well, not to pedantic, but…

…I drew a circle that represented the sun, and then picked a point at 62,000 scale miles from its surface. Assuming I’ve done the math correctly, the sun would have spanned about 134 degrees from the comet’s point of view. Not quite half the sky, but then what’s 46 degrees when you’re that close to the surface of the sun?

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:46:04 +0000

MTU (8) said:

BTW. what’s a “camelback”?

Flexible water pouch worn in a backpack, and connected to a drinking tube.

By: Navneeth

Navneeth — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:39:34 +0000

For that size, it would’ve had a mass of hundreds of thousands of tons — about what a loaded oil tanker weighs on Earth!

Why the comparison between mass and weight? A fully-loaded tanker will have the same mass anywhere! It have been simpler just to say, “about the same [mass] as a loaded oil tanker”, no?