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Comet Holmes

January 01, 1970

Comet Holmes /ˈhoʊmz/ (official designation: 17P/Holmes) is a periodic comet in the Solar System, discovered by the British amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes on November 6, 1892. Although normally a very faint object, Holmes became notable during its October 2007 return when it temporarily brightened by a factor of a million, in what was the largest known outburst by a comet, and became visible to the naked eye.[5] It also briefly became the largest object in the Solar System, as its coma (the thin dissipating dust ball around the comet) expanded to a diameter greater than that of the Sun (although its mass remained minuscule).[6] Between 1857–2106 perihelion remains between 2.05–2.36 AU.[7]

17P/Holmes
Comet 17P/Holmes and its blue ion tail
(taken on November 4, 2007)
Discovery
Discovery dateNovember 6, 1892
Designations
1892 V1; 1892 III;
1892f; 1899 L1;
1899 II; 1899d;
1906 III; 1906f;
1964 O1; 1964 X;
1964i; 1972 I;
1971b; 1979 IV;
1979f; 1986 V;
1986f; 1993 VII;
1993i
Orbital characteristics
EpochOctober 27, 2007 (JD 2454400.5)
Aphelion5.183610 AU
Perihelion2.053218 AU
Semi-major axis3.618414 AU
Eccentricity0.432564
Orbital period6.882994 a
Inclination19.1126°
Last perihelionFebruary 19, 2021[1][2]
March 27, 2014
May 4, 2007
Next perihelionJanuary 31, 2028[3][4]

Discovery edit

 
10 November 1892, near the Andromeda Galaxy

Comet Holmes was discovered by Edwin Holmes on November 6, 1892, while he was conducting regular observations of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31).[8][9] Its discovery in 1892 was possible because of an increase in its magnitude similar to the 2007 outburst; it brightened to an approximate magnitude of 4 or 5 before fading from visibility over a period of several weeks.[10]

The comet's discovery was confirmed by Edward Walter Maunder (Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England), William Henry Maw (Kensington, London, England), and B. Kidd (Bramley, Surrey, England).[8][9] Independent discoveries were made by Thomas David Anderson (Edinburgh, Scotland) on November 8 and by Mike Brown (Wilkes, USA) and by John Ewen Davidson (Mackay, Queensland, Australia) on November 9.[11]

The first calculations of the elliptical orbit of 17P/Holmes were done independently by Heinrich Kreutz and George Mary Searle. Additional orbits eventually established the perihelion date as June 13 and the orbital period as 6.9 years. These calculations proved that the comet was not a return of Biela's Comet.

The 1899 and 1906 appearances were observed, but the comet was lost (see Lost comet) after 1906 until it was recovered on July 16, 1964, by Elizabeth Roemer (US Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station, Arizona, United States). Aided by the computer predictions of Brian G. Marsden, the comet has been observed on every subsequent return.

2007 outburst edit

 
Comet 17P/Holmes on 2 November 2007

During its 2007 return, Holmes unexpectedly brightened from a magnitude of about 17 to about 2.8 in a period of only 42 hours, making it visible to the naked eye. This represents a change of brightness by a factor of a million and is the largest known outburst by a comet thus far.[5] The outburst took place from October 23 to 24, 2007.[5][12][13] The first person reportedly to notice a change was J. A. Henríquez Santana on Tenerife in the Canary Islands; minutes later, Ramón Naves in Barcelona noticed the comet at magnitude 7.3.[13] It became easily visible to the naked eye as a bright yellow "star" in Perseus,[14][15] and by October 25 17P/Holmes appeared as the third-brightest "star" in that constellation.[13]

Although large telescopes had already shown fine-scale cometary details, naked-eye observers saw Holmes as merely star-like until October 26.[14] After that date, 17P/Holmes began to appear more comet-like to naked-eye observers.[14] This is because during the comet's outburst, its orbit took it to near opposition with respect to Earth, and because comet tails point away from the Sun, Earth observers were looking nearly straight down along the tail of 17P/Holmes, making the comet appear as a bright sphere.

Holmes's nucleus is estimated at 3.4 km.[16]

Comet Holmes not only became brighter, but its coma (nebulous envelope around the nucleus) expanded. In late October 2007 the coma's apparent diameter increased from 3.3 arcminutes to over 13 arcminutes,[17] about half the diameter of the Moon in the sky. At a distance of around 2 AU, this means that the true diameter of the coma had swelled to over 1 million km,[18] or about 70% of the diameter of the Sun. By comparison, the Moon is 380,000 km from Earth. Therefore, during the 2007 outburst of Comet Holmes the coma was a sphere wider than the diameter of the Moon's orbit around Earth. In November 2007, the coma had dispersed to a volume larger than the Sun, briefly giving it the largest extended atmosphere in the Solar System.[6][19]

The cause of the outburst is not definitely known. The huge cloud of gas and dust may have resulted from a collision with a meteoroid, or, more probably, from a build-up of gas inside the comet's nucleus that eventually broke through the surface.[20] However, researchers at the Max Planck Institute suggest in a paper published in Astronomy and Astrophysics that the brightening can be explained by a thick, air-tight dust cover and the effects of H2O sublimation, with the comet's porous structure providing more surface area for sublimation, up to one order of magnitude greater. Energy from the Sun – insolation – was stored in the dust cover and the nucleus within the months before the outburst.[21]

The comet remained visible in February 2008 though it had become a challenging target at about magnitude +5 in the constellation Perseus. It had expanded to greater than 2 degrees of arc as seen from Earth, and thus had very little surface brightness. Notably the comet 17P/Holmes dust trail from the 2007 outburst repeatedly converges at the original site.[5]

An outburst of 3–4 magnitudes occurred in January 2015, but still required a large telescope to be seen.[22]

  •  
    On October 25 the comet looked liked a bright new star in the constellation of Perseus.
  •  
    This photo composite shows the comet's size and motion in the constellation Perseus from October 25, 2007 through March 9, 2008.
  •  
    Motion with expanding dust cloud
    A simulation showing the angular diameter of the expanding dust cloud for 120 days past the initial event on October 24. The surface brightness decreased over time.
  •  
    17P/Holmes is a periodic comet in an inclined and elliptical orbit between Mars and Jupiter.[23] The comet was closest to the Sun on May 4, 2007.
  •  
    Animation of Comet Holmes's orbit from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2017
      Comet Holmes  ·   Earth ·   Mars ·   Jupiter

References edit

  1. ^ Seiichi Yoshida. "17P/Holmes". Seiichi Yoshida's Comet Catalog. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  2. ^ Syuichi Nakano (2011-05-19). . OAA Computing and Minor Planet Sections. Archived from the original on 2015-09-11. Retrieved 2012-02-18.
  3. ^ "17P/Holmes Orbit". Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 2021-06-12.
  4. ^ "Horizons Batch for 17P/Holmes (90000285) on 2028-Jan-31" (Perihelion occurs when rdot flips from negative to positive). JPL Horizons. Retrieved 2023-02-11. (JPL#K212/32 Soln.date: 2023-Jan-30)
  5. ^ a b c d Gritsevich, M.; Nissinen, M.; Oksanen, A.; Suomela, J.; Silber, E. A. (June 2022). "Evolution of the dust trail of comet 17P/Holmes". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 513 (2): 2201–2214. doi:10.1093/mnras/stac822. hdl:10995/117894.
  6. ^ a b Jewitt, David (2007-11-09). "Comet Holmes Bigger Than The Sun". Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
  7. ^ Kinoshita, Kazuo (2019-05-22). "17P/Holmes past, present and future orbital elements". Comet Orbit. from the original on 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
  8. ^ a b Holmes, Edwin (1892). "Discovery of a New Comet in Andromeda". The Observatory. 15: 441–443. Bibcode:1892Obs....15..441H.
  9. ^ a b "Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, Friday, November 11, 1892". The Observatory. 15: 417–424. 1892. Bibcode:1892Obs....15..417.
  10. ^ Editors. "Comet Holmes Stays Bright, Enlarges in the Evening Sky Archived 2007-10-27 at archive.today", Sky and Telescope, 27 October 2007. Retrieved 29 October 2007.
  11. ^ Davidson, J. E. "Comet e, 1889," The Observatory, July 1890, Vol. 13, pp. 247. Retrieved 27 October 2007.
  12. ^ Gunn, Angela. "Flash News Flash! 2007-06-25 at the Wayback Machine," USA Today Tech Space, 24 October 2007. Retrieved 25 October 2007.
  13. ^ a b c Roger W. Sinnott (October 24, 2007). "Comet Holmes Undergoes Huge Outburst". Sky & Telescope. Archived from the original on 2007-10-27. Retrieved 2007-10-25.
  14. ^ a b c Fischer, Daniel. "Incredible comet eruption: from under 17th to 3rd magnitude in hours!," The Cosmic Mirror, #306, 24 October 2007. Retrieved 25 October 2007.
  15. ^ Skymap: late October 2007, Northeast, after sunset, Spaceweather.com. Retrieved 28 October 2007
  16. ^ Primary measurements, Chris L. Peterson Cloudbait Observatory, Colorado 2011-05-25 at the Wayback Machine, The coma size values plotted at the bottom of this page are primary measurements. They were obtained using conventional methods: individual short CCDs images were made in order to avoid saturation, and these were then calibrated with bias, flat, and dark frames and summed to increase the image dynamic range. Each stacked image (for the 5 nights of data) was astrometrically calibrated (using Pinpoint) for scale, and the intensity profile of the coma measured with a standard tool (in this case, the line profile tool in MaximDL). The resulting profiles were exported to Excel, normalized to the same gain, and the width measured against the noise floor. The best reference is the plotted data itself.
  17. ^ Primary measurements, (see luminosity graph; bottom of page) Cloudbait Observatory, Colorado 2011-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ 2 AU×(~150 Gm/AU)×sin(13 arcmin) ≈ 1.1 million km
  19. ^ Britt, Robert (2007-11-15). "Incredible Comet Bigger than the Sun". Space.com. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
  20. ^ "Comet Holmes brightens in retreat", BBC NEWS, 30 October 2007
  21. ^ Altenhoff, W. J.; Kreysa, E.; Menten, K. M.; Sievers, A.; Thum, C.; Weiss, A. (2009). "Why did Comet 17P/Holmes burst out? Nucleus splitting or delayed sublimation?". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 495 (3): 975–978. arXiv:0901.2739. Bibcode:2009A&A...495..975A. doi:10.1051/0004-6361:200810458.
  22. ^ Comet 17P/Holmes: report on brightest outburst since 2007
  23. ^ Nasa 3D simulation of orbit for 17P/Holmes (Java Applet)

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to 17P/Holmes.
  • 17P at Cometary Science Center
  • 17P at Kronk’s Cometography
  • 17P at Kazuo Kinoshita's Comets
  • 17P at Seiichi Yoshida's Comet Catalog
    • Magnitude graph for 2007-2009
  • Enigmatic Comet Holmes by Jeff Bryant, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project.
  • Evolution of Comet 17P/Holmes
  • Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly
  • Simple Instructions on How to Find Comet Holmes Instructions for the Amateur-based around Toronto or New York.
  • 17P at Las Cumbres Observatory (22 Jan 2010 11:57, 223 seconds)
  • (Hubblesite STScI-2007-40 : November 1, 2007)
  • NASA's Spitzer Gets Sneak Peek Inside Comet Holmes 2021-10-08 at the Wayback Machine (October 13, 2008)


January 01, 1970
comet, holmes, official, designation, holmes, periodic, comet, solar, system, discovered, british, amateur, astronomer, edwin, holmes, november, 1892, although, normally, very, faint, object, holmes, became, notable, during, october, 2007, return, when, tempor. Comet Holmes ˈ h oʊ m z official designation 17P Holmes is a periodic comet in the Solar System discovered by the British amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes on November 6 1892 Although normally a very faint object Holmes became notable during its October 2007 return when it temporarily brightened by a factor of a million in what was the largest known outburst by a comet and became visible to the naked eye 5 It also briefly became the largest object in the Solar System as its coma the thin dissipating dust ball around the comet expanded to a diameter greater than that of the Sun although its mass remained minuscule 6 Between 1857 2106 perihelion remains between 2 05 2 36 AU 7 17P HolmesComet 17P Holmes and its blue ion tail taken on November 4 2007 DiscoveryDiscovery dateNovember 6 1892DesignationsAlternative designations1892 V1 1892 III 1892f 1899 L1 1899 II 1899d 1906 III 1906f 1964 O1 1964 X 1964i 1972 I 1971b 1979 IV 1979f 1986 V 1986f 1993 VII 1993iOrbital characteristicsEpochOctober 27 2007 JD 2454400 5 Aphelion5 183610 AUPerihelion2 053218 AUSemi major axis3 618414 AUEccentricity0 432564Orbital period6 882994 aInclination19 1126 Last perihelionFebruary 19 2021 1 2 March 27 2014May 4 2007Next perihelionJanuary 31 2028 3 4 Contents 1 Discovery 2 2007 outburst 3 References 4 External linksDiscovery edit nbsp 10 November 1892 near the Andromeda Galaxy Comet Holmes was discovered by Edwin Holmes on November 6 1892 while he was conducting regular observations of the Andromeda Galaxy M31 8 9 Its discovery in 1892 was possible because of an increase in its magnitude similar to the 2007 outburst it brightened to an approximate magnitude of 4 or 5 before fading from visibility over a period of several weeks 10 The comet s discovery was confirmed by Edward Walter Maunder Royal Observatory Greenwich England William Henry Maw Kensington London England and B Kidd Bramley Surrey England 8 9 Independent discoveries were made by Thomas David Anderson Edinburgh Scotland on November 8 and by Mike Brown Wilkes USA and by John Ewen Davidson Mackay Queensland Australia on November 9 11 The first calculations of the elliptical orbit of 17P Holmes were done independently by Heinrich Kreutz and George Mary Searle Additional orbits eventually established the perihelion date as June 13 and the orbital period as 6 9 years These calculations proved that the comet was not a return of Biela s Comet The 1899 and 1906 appearances were observed but the comet was lost see Lost comet after 1906 until it was recovered on July 16 1964 by Elizabeth Roemer US Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station Arizona United States Aided by the computer predictions of Brian G Marsden the comet has been observed on every subsequent return 2007 outburst edit nbsp Comet 17P Holmes on 2 November 2007 During its 2007 return Holmes unexpectedly brightened from a magnitude of about 17 to about 2 8 in a period of only 42 hours making it visible to the naked eye This represents a change of brightness by a factor of a million and is the largest known outburst by a comet thus far 5 The outburst took place from October 23 to 24 2007 5 12 13 The first person reportedly to notice a change was J A Henriquez Santana on Tenerife in the Canary Islands minutes later Ramon Naves in Barcelona noticed the comet at magnitude 7 3 13 It became easily visible to the naked eye as a bright yellow star in Perseus 14 15 and by October 25 17P Holmes appeared as the third brightest star in that constellation 13 Although large telescopes had already shown fine scale cometary details naked eye observers saw Holmes as merely star like until October 26 14 After that date 17P Holmes began to appear more comet like to naked eye observers 14 This is because during the comet s outburst its orbit took it to near opposition with respect to Earth and because comet tails point away from the Sun Earth observers were looking nearly straight down along the tail of 17P Holmes making the comet appear as a bright sphere Holmes s nucleus is estimated at 3 4 km 16 Comet Holmes not only became brighter but its coma nebulous envelope around the nucleus expanded In late October 2007 the coma s apparent diameter increased from 3 3 arcminutes to over 13 arcminutes 17 about half the diameter of the Moon in the sky At a distance of around 2 AU this means that the true diameter of the coma had swelled to over 1 million km 18 or about 70 of the diameter of the Sun By comparison the Moon is 380 000 km from Earth Therefore during the 2007 outburst of Comet Holmes the coma was a sphere wider than the diameter of the Moon s orbit around Earth In November 2007 the coma had dispersed to a volume larger than the Sun briefly giving it the largest extended atmosphere in the Solar System 6 19 The cause of the outburst is not definitely known The huge cloud of gas and dust may have resulted from a collision with a meteoroid or more probably from a build up of gas inside the comet s nucleus that eventually broke through the surface 20 However researchers at the Max Planck Institute suggest in a paper published in Astronomy and Astrophysics that the brightening can be explained by a thick air tight dust cover and the effects of H2O sublimation with the comet s porous structure providing more surface area for sublimation up to one order of magnitude greater Energy from the Sun insolation was stored in the dust cover and the nucleus within the months before the outburst 21 The comet remained visible in February 2008 though it had become a challenging target at about magnitude 5 in the constellation Perseus It had expanded to greater than 2 degrees of arc as seen from Earth and thus had very little surface brightness Notably the comet 17P Holmes dust trail from the 2007 outburst repeatedly converges at the original site 5 An outburst of 3 4 magnitudes occurred in January 2015 but still required a large telescope to be seen 22 nbsp On October 25 the comet looked liked a bright new star in the constellation of Perseus nbsp This photo composite shows the comet s size and motion in the constellation Perseus from October 25 2007 through March 9 2008 nbsp Motion with expanding dust cloudA simulation showing the angular diameter of the expanding dust cloud for 120 days past the initial event on October 24 The surface brightness decreased over time nbsp 17P Holmes is a periodic comet in an inclined and elliptical orbit between Mars and Jupiter 23 The comet was closest to the Sun on May 4 2007 nbsp Animation of Comet Holmes s orbit from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2017 Comet Holmes Earth Mars JupiterReferences edit Seiichi Yoshida 17P Holmes Seiichi Yoshida s Comet Catalog Retrieved 2010 02 24 Syuichi Nakano 2011 05 19 17P Holmes NK 2100 OAA Computing and Minor Planet Sections Archived from the original on 2015 09 11 Retrieved 2012 02 18 17P Holmes Orbit Minor Planet Center Retrieved 2021 06 12 Horizons Batch for 17P Holmes 90000285 on 2028 Jan 31 Perihelion occurs when rdot flips from negative to positive JPL Horizons Retrieved 2023 02 11 JPL K212 32 Soln date 2023 Jan 30 a b c d Gritsevich M Nissinen M Oksanen A Suomela J Silber E A June 2022 Evolution of the dust trail of comet 17P Holmes Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 513 2 2201 2214 doi 10 1093 mnras stac822 hdl 10995 117894 a b Jewitt David 2007 11 09 Comet Holmes Bigger Than The Sun Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii Retrieved 2007 11 17 Kinoshita Kazuo 2019 05 22 17P Holmes past present and future orbital elements Comet Orbit Archived from the original on 2011 07 10 Retrieved 2023 07 19 a b Holmes Edwin 1892 Discovery of a New Comet in Andromeda The Observatory 15 441 443 Bibcode 1892Obs 15 441H a b Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society Friday November 11 1892 The Observatory 15 417 424 1892 Bibcode 1892Obs 15 417 Editors Comet Holmes Stays Bright Enlarges in the Evening Sky Archived 2007 10 27 at archive today Sky and Telescope 27 October 2007 Retrieved 29 October 2007 Davidson J E Comet e 1889 The Observatory July 1890 Vol 13 pp 247 Retrieved 27 October 2007 Gunn Angela Flash News Flash Archived 2007 06 25 at the Wayback Machine USA Today Tech Space 24 October 2007 Retrieved 25 October 2007 a b c Roger W Sinnott October 24 2007 Comet Holmes Undergoes Huge Outburst Sky amp Telescope Archived from the original on 2007 10 27 Retrieved 2007 10 25 a b c Fischer Daniel Incredible comet eruption from under 17th to 3rd magnitude in hours The Cosmic Mirror 306 24 October 2007 Retrieved 25 October 2007 Skymap late October 2007 Northeast after sunset Spaceweather com Retrieved 28 October 2007 Primary measurements Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory Colorado Archived 2011 05 25 at the Wayback Machine The coma size values plotted at the bottom of this page are primary measurements They were obtained using conventional methods individual short CCDs images were made in order to avoid saturation and these were then calibrated with bias flat and dark frames and summed to increase the image dynamic range Each stacked image for the 5 nights of data was astrometrically calibrated using Pinpoint for scale and the intensity profile of the coma measured with a standard tool in this case the line profile tool in MaximDL The resulting profiles were exported to Excel normalized to the same gain and the width measured against the noise floor The best reference is the plotted data itself Primary measurements see luminosity graph bottom of page Cloudbait Observatory Colorado Archived 2011 05 25 at the Wayback Machine 2 AU 150 Gm AU sin 13 arcmin 1 1 million km Britt Robert 2007 11 15 Incredible Comet Bigger than the Sun Space com Retrieved 2008 04 30 Comet Holmes brightens in retreat BBC NEWS 30 October 2007 Altenhoff W J Kreysa E Menten K M Sievers A Thum C Weiss A 2009 Why did Comet 17P Holmes burst out Nucleus splitting or delayed sublimation Astronomy and Astrophysics 495 3 975 978 arXiv 0901 2739 Bibcode 2009A amp A 495 975A doi 10 1051 0004 6361 200810458 Comet 17P Holmes report on brightest outburst since 2007 Nasa 3D simulation of orbit for 17P Holmes Java Applet External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to 17P Holmes 17P at Cometary Science Center 17P at Kronk s Cometography 17P at Kazuo Kinoshita s Comets 17P at Seiichi Yoshida s Comet Catalog Magnitude graph for 2007 2009 Enigmatic Comet Holmes by Jeff Bryant The Wolfram Demonstrations Project Evolution of Comet 17P Holmes Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly Quick Facts About Comet Holmes Simple Instructions on How to Find Comet Holmes Instructions for the Amateur based around Toronto or New York 17P at Las Cumbres Observatory 22 Jan 2010 11 57 223 seconds Hubble Zooms In on Heart of Mystery Comet Hubblesite STScI 2007 40 November 1 2007 NASA s Spitzer Gets Sneak Peek Inside Comet Holmes Archived 2021 10 08 at the Wayback Machine October 13 2008 Numbered comets Previous16P Brooks Comet Holmes Next18D Perrine Mrkos Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Comet Holmes amp oldid 1192488317, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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