The VLT Observes Comet LINEAR's "Shower"

mindpixel writes "Two nights ago, while operating the VLT (the world's largest optical telescope), we got a call into the control room asking us to follow up the Hubble's imaging of Comet Linear a few days prior. As soon as we got the coordinates, I pointed the telescope at the very fast moving comet and started taking pictures. They came in quickly, and they were awesome! We couldn't believe the detail we were getting. The comet was completely shattered. Even in the unprocessed images we were able to count nine mini-comets. Six minutes ago, they released it The VLT Observes Comet LINEAR's "Shower")"

Comments

Another Site With Some Info

[JetJaguar]

You might have a look at encke. This site has a lot of info about comets in general, including finding charts, positions, brightness, and lots of pictures spread across the site.

Re:So what does this mean?

[Cally]

It's theoretically known that comets will tend to break apart due to the sudden heating from the sun as they approach the sun. However it hasn't been observed very often before. Shoemaker-Levy 9 (which crashed into Jupiter) did this, but a different cause - tidal stress from Jupiter. This seems to have been caused by the heat from the sun causing explosive sublimation of the ices that comprise much of the comet. Given that this particular LINEAR comet (it's named for the the LINEAR automated survey which has found tons of comets) doesn't appear to have approached the sun before,the ratio of ice to dirt is likely to be high. There's also speculation that the object itself broke off a larger parent body; not sure of the details on that one. NASA's Space Science site usually has good coverage of these things (here's their LINEAR story.) Sign up for the news alert mail, you get to hear about these things before Slashdot ;)

Apologies for any accidental misinfo in this.
HTH
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my

Re:Technology is getting crazy...

[Christopher Thomas]

All in all, how much longer do people think before we get to some barrier to further advances...

From one point of view, we already are at the barrier. We have telescopes that can resolve images at the theoretical resolution limit for their aperture size (as governed by diffraction), we have telescopes that can focus all or almost all of the light falling on their (filled) apertures on to their detectors, and we have detectors that can detect individual photons. In other words, our telescopes are approaching the best possible efficiency for whatever aperture size we choose to build.

From another point of view, we will have the potential for continued advancement for quite a while to come. Optical interferometry-based telescopes are just starting to come into their own, which will allow us to build telescopes with synthetic apertures arbitrarily long. Segmented mirror technology continues to improve, with the maximum size of segmented mirror systems growing incrementally larger. Space-based telescopes are still an immature technology; while space-based telescopes won't be more efficient per se than ground-based telescopes, they can view wavelength ranges that the atmosphere blocks. There is also a fair bit of work to be done on automated instrumentation (as of the last few articles I've read on the subject, galaxy spectra surveys are still slow and involve a lot of fiddling, for example).

In summary, while we're starting to approach perfect efficiency for the telescopes we've built, there is still a lot of engineering to be done in order to incrementally broaden the range of telescopes that _can_ be built.

Re:ALREADY slashdotted?

[Silver A]

Does the slashdot editorial staff give any warning to sites they're about to feature, maybe giving them a chance to put up a mirror? Some sites are pretty immune to the Slashdot Effect, but lots aren't. Andover may even want to look into providing mirror space, maybe with an andover ad (like geocities or xoom), as a possible way of reducing the disruption of the Slashdot effect.

Hubble does it too

[sohp]

Well these aren't the VLT pics but the HST made
these photos at about the same time. And I believe this site is more slashdot-ready.

s

Re:Technology is getting crazy...

[V_M_Smith]

You have no idea how crazy!

There is currently an international collaboration to construct a 4m-class liquid mirror telescope. Interesting idea based on a simple principle of fluid mechanics. There have even been mutterings about placing a larger version on the moon. The main problem with LMT's is the limited directionality they have. They do seem to be okay for survey work, though.

Have the VLT no respect for privacy??

[vertical-limit]

Would you like it if someone was observing you in the shower? Geez, guys, leave LINEAR alone.