Credit EOS/FORS/VLT
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On Monday, Comet 73P/Schwassmann Wachmann 3 broke in
two, and now it is breaking up into smaller pieces as it heads
toward the sun. There have been recent internet predictions
that a large fragment of this comet would strike the earth
on May 25, but in a new UPDATE, NASA says this will NOT
happen. However, it is possible that meteor showers could
result if earth passes through the dust cloud surrounding
the comet.
The comet will make the closest approach to earth of
any comet in 20 years--it will be six million miles away, or
25 times farther than the moon. Whether or not the dust
cloud is now large enough to reach earth's orbit is unknown,
and depends on whether or not the comet was originally
broken up by an impact or by thermal activity within the
object. An impact would mean that the dust cloud is
expanding faster, and could have reached earth orbit by now,
although this is not considered likely.
Schwassmann Wachmann 3 was observed to be breaking up
on its last trip through the inner solar system in 1995. Home
astronomers with even small telescopes should be able to see
the fragments on May 12, 13 and fourteen as they move
through the constellations Cygnus and Pegasus. At present,
fragment B is the brightness of a 9th magnitude star. The
Hubble Space Telescope will be watching the comet on its
close approach, and the Aricibo Radio Telescope will be
pinging the fragments to determine their shape and size.
UPDATE: NASA has now announced that the comet fragments WILL
definitely NOT hit the earth. Tariq Malik writes in
space.com that the Schwassman-Wachman 3 comet has circled
the sun every 5.4 years for over 75 years. Comets are
mixtures of ice and space debris, and it is probably the
heat of the sun that has caused the comet to break up into
smaller, icy pieces. But NASA scientists are confident that
these fragments will remain over 8 million miles away from
the earth during the comet's closest approach between May 12
and 28.
Donald Yeomans, of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, says,
"We are very well acquainted with the trajectory of Comet
73P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3." NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
has been keeping an eye on the comet's disintegration.
The comet was named after German astronomers Arnold
Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann, who first discovered
it in 1930. It wasn't seen again until 1979, and then was
missed when it made a 1985 pass. Astronomers were able to
observe the comet's initial fragmentation in 1995. Armed the
Hubble and with their computers, NASA is confident they can
correctly predict exactly where?and when?the comet fragments
will impact the earth, and it won't happen this time around.
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