Instrument commissioning phase, Beginning final approach to the comet |
Instrument commissioning phase, Beginning final approach to the comet |
Mar 26 2014, 06:23 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 93 Joined: 21-January 13 Member No.: 6845 |
Today a member of the camera science team put up the first images of the comet on his office door. So the camera works. He said on the image is M107 and the comet could this be?
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Jul 16 2014, 07:44 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Just thought of an exciting possibility: What are the odds that the two lobes had significantly different histories before 'bonding', as in formed in different areas of the primordial nebula?
Probably not likely. However: - The formative collision had to happen at fairly low relative velocity. That argues that they were neighbors, quite possibly siblings during their formation. -Conversely, CG is now an inner Solar System object, and it most likely did not form in what is effectively our neck of the woods. --If they formed in the Oort Cloud as neighbors & bonded, then they're stuck together real well since they almost certainly had to survive at least one encounter with Jupiter to achieve CG's present orbit. --If they met & stuck together at or near where they are now heliocentrically, then they could have formed at different locations in the Oort. However, ending up in this state would be amazingly unlikely. --Still, it seems at least as unlikely that they are fragments of an original object that calved during a close passage & subsequently reunited since they'd tend to drift apart due to independent outgassing events at the very least. Bottom line here is that we've seen that a contact binary asteroid in the main Belt is not unusual because relative velocities are low between most of these objects. A contact binary comet in the same region does seem unusual, unless CG is an intermediate object between those two classes that formed in the inner Solar System. Lots of interesting possibilities, and no doubt many future surprises ahead. This is gonna be a really, really fascinating mission. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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