Year of the Comet: third comet set to make appearance in April 2013

February 2, 2013 – GREEN COMET LEMMON - 2013 could be the Year of the Comet. Comet Pan-STARRS is set to become a naked eye object in March, followed by possibly-Great Comet ISON in November. Now we must add to that list green Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6). “Comet Lemmon is putting on a great show for us down in the southern hemisphere,” reports John Drummond, who sent us a picture from Gisborne, New Zealand: “I took the picture on Jan. 23rd using a 41 cm (16 in) Meade reflector,” says Drummond. “It is a stack of twenty 1 minute exposures.” That much time was required for a good view of the comet’s approximately 7th-magnitude coma (“coma”=cloud of gas surrounding the comet’s nucleus). Lemmon’s green color comes from the gases that make up its coma. Jets spewing from the comet’s nucleus contain cyanogen (CN: a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon (C2). Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space. Discovered on March 23rd 2012 by the Mount Lemmon survey in Arizona, Comet Lemmon is on an elliptical orbit with a period of almost 11,000 years. This is its first visit to the inner solar system in a very long time. The comet is brightening as it approaches the sun; light curves suggest that it will reach 2nd or 3rd magnitude, similar to the stars in the Big Dipper, in late March when it approaches the sun at about the same distance as Venus (0.7 AU). Northern hemisphere observers will get their first good look at the comet in early April; until then it is a target exclusively for astronomers in the southern hemisphere. –Space Weather

February 22, 2013 – SPACE – A GREEN LEMMON: At the moment there are three significant comets plunging toward the sun: Comet ISON, Comet Pan-STARRS, and Comet Lemmon. The most beautiful so far is this one: “Comet Lemmon has a beautiful tail with lovely fine structure,” says Phil Hart of Lake Eppalock, Victoria, Australia, who photographed it on Feb. 17th. The comet is now slightly closer to the sun than Earth. Solar heating has turned it into a binocular object (magnitude +5.5 to +6) barely visible to the human eye, but dazzling through backyard telescopes, as shown in Hart’s photo above. Comet Lemmon’s verdant color comes from two of the gases boiling off its nucleus: cyanogen (CN: a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon (C2). Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space. The combination of its colorful atmosphere and filamentary tail make this comet visually striking. Ultimately, Comet Pan-STARRS and especially Comet ISON could surpass it, but for now the most beautiful comet in the solar system appears to be a green Lemmon. –Space Watch

Could this be the Comet of the century??????





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Somehow I doubt I'll be around then tom, so don't plan on worrying about it.

On May 24, 2014, Earth will plow through a dense stream of dust particles shed by Comet 209P/LINEAR. Dynamicists think the crossing could result in an intense meteor shower — maybe even a "storm" — and North Americans will have front-row seats. May 24, 2014, is circled on our skywatching calendars. On that date, we might experience the most dramatic display of "shooting stars" in more than a decade. Comet 209P/LINEAR's next perihelion occurs on May 6, 2014, at a point 0.969 astronomical unit from the Sun and with Earth not far away.

Just 18 days later, we should cross through dozens of particle streams shed during past orbits. The predictions are still rough, but three different models suggest the sky show could be spectacular. "All the trails ejected between 1803 and 1924 cross Earth's path in May 2014," notes Jérémie Vaubaillon (IMCEE, France). "As a consequence, this shower might as well be a storm," with the potential to see more than 1,000 meteors per hour under ideal conditions.

That's the same conclusion reached by Russian meteor sleuth Mikhail Maslov, who thinks at least 100 to 400 meteors — and quite possibly many more — should rain down per hour. But he cautions that Comet 209P/LINEAR is small and hasn't been observed much. Moreover, outbursts of meteors linked to this comet haven't been noted in the past.