Water for life in space? You got it.

Water for life in space? You got it.

http://www.planetnetopia.com/forum/posts/id_1141/title_water-for-life-in-space-you-got-it/

“Green Comet” visits neighborhood

Feb. 21, 2009
Courtesy Uni­ver­s­ity of Leices­ter
and World Science staff

As­tro­no­mers are keep­ing a close eye on a green­ish com­et fast ap­proach­ing Earth’s vicin­ity, reach­ing its near­est point to us on Feb. 24.

Com­et Lulin will streak by the earth with­in 38 mil­lion miles—160 times far­ther than the moon—and is ex­pected to be vis­i­ble to the na­ked eye. Dis­cov­ered only a year ago, the com­et gains its green colour from poi­son­ous cy­an­o­gen and di­a­tom­ic car­bon gas­es in its at­mos­phere.

This false-color im­age of Com­et Lulin tak­en Jan. 28 merges da­ta ac­quired by Swift's Ul­tra­vi­o­let Tel­e­scope (blue and green) and X-Ray Tel­e­scope (red). At the time of the ob­ser­va­tion, the com­et was 99.5 mil­lion miles from Earth and 115.3 mil­lion miles from the sun. (Cred­it: Univ. of Le­ices­ter/­NA­SA/ et al.)

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This will be the com­et’s first vis­it to the Earth’s in­ner so­lar sys­tem.

Re­search­ers from the Uni­ver­s­ity of Leices­ter, U.K. are us­ing NASA’s Swift sat­el­lite to mon­i­tor Com­et Lulin as it closes on Earth. The space­craft can re­cord images of a com­et sim­ul­ta­ne­ously in ul­tra­vi­o­let and X-ray light. “Swift is the ide­al space­craft with which to ob­serve this com­et,” said Jen­ny Cart­er, an as­tron­o­mer at the uni­ver­s­ity.

A com­et is a clump of fro­zen gas­es mixed with dust. These “dirty snow­balls” cast off gas and dust when­ev­er they ven­ture near the sun. Com­et Lulin, which is for­mally known as C/2007 N3, was dis­cov­ered last year by as­tron­o­mers at Tai­wan’s Lulin Ob­serv­a­to­ry.

On Jan. 28, Swift trained its Ul­tra­vi­o­let/Optical Tel­e­scope and X-Ray Tel­e­scope on Com­et Lulin. “The com­et is quite ac­tive,” said team mem­ber Den­nis Bode­wits, a NASA Post­doc­tor­al Fel­low at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter in Green­belt, Md. The tel­e­scope da­ta “show that Lulin was shed­ding nearly 800 gal­lons of wa­ter each sec­ond,” enough to fill an Olympic-sized swim­ming pool in less than 15 min­utes.

Swift can’t see wa­ter di­rect­ly. But ul­tra­vi­o­let light from the sun quickly breaks apart wa­ter mo­le­cules in­to hy­dro­gen atoms and hy­drox­yl mo­le­cules. Swift’s tel­e­scope de­tects the hy­drox­yl mo­le­cules. Its im­ages of Lulin show a hy­drox­yl cloud span­ning nearly 250,000 miles, or slightly great­er than the dis­tance be­tween Earth and the moon.

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