#exocomets

The True Nature of Oumaumua

On October 19th 2017, the Pan-STARRS1 observatory in Hawaii detected what is believed to be the very first interstellar object, some 40 days after it had already passed it's closest point to Earth.

The object sparked a lot of coverage, and due to a number of unexplained behaviours, some even suggested it was an alien ship.

Firstly while it behaved like a comet, it's shape was nothing like the comets we experience in our solar system, rather than round, it was flat. Secondly, as it approached the Sun, it didn't generate a notable tale, the lack of gaseous outflow was most unlike your average comet. In addition to this, it's movement was peculiar, it appeared to gain more thrust from it's pass near the sun than could be accounted for by it's supposed mass.

Two Arizona State University astrophysicists, Steven Desch and Alan Jackson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration believe they have found an explanation to all the issues without reaching for the "aliens".

Instead, Desch and Jackson proposed something a little more akin to a bit of Pluto, although hailing from another star system.

The proposed theory is, that sometime around 400 million years ago a comet smashed into a Pluto like body, with a surface crust of Nitrogen which was hurled into space and out of the star system.

Fast forward to 2017, it reached our solar system, having been eroded by almost half a billion years of interstellar charged particles, and now more like a flat pebble than a rounded mass.

The fact it's nitrogen can account for the mistake in calculating it's mass, the reflective properties were greater than assumed, and therefore the mass was smaller, which explains too the odd speed gain from the Sun as it passed through. The nitrogen theory also explains the lack of tail.

So, sorry Ancient Aliens dude ..

NITROGEN !

seems at least the more logical explanation.

Astronomers spot a giant Halley’s Comet-like object as it disappears into the atmosphere of a white dwarf

Other solar systems may have belts of icy objects, just like our own Kuiper Belt

Infalling debris is pretty normal in white dwarf systems. Between 25 and 50 percent of white dwarfs show evidence of “pollution” from rocky bodies such as asteroids and even planets as they’re swallowed up by what remains of their sun. A recently-announced observation, however, marks the first time such infalling debris has included comet-like materials, such as ices. The discovery was made by a team of astronomers led by Siyi Xu of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. The white dwarf in question, WD 1425+540, lies 170 light-years away, in a binary system located in the constellation Boötes. Its companion is a K dwarf star in a wide binary orbit; the two stars are separated by about 2,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

The object that astronomers spied falling into the white dwarf has a chemical makeup similar to that of Halley’s Comet, but a mass about 100,000 times as large and a much higher water content than our solar system’s counterpart. It also contained nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and sulfur. In fact, “This particular object is quite rich in nitrogen, more so than any object observed in our solar system,” Xu said in a press release announcing the finding.

The discovery was made using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, which provided complementary observations that allowed for the determination of elements in the white dwarf’s atmosphere. Read more ~ Astronomy Magazine

Hubble Detects ‘Exocomets’ Taking the Plunge Into a Young Star

Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and resides 95 light-years from Earth.

The exocomets — comets outside our solar system — were not directly seen around the star, but their presence was inferred by detecting gas that is likely the vaporized remnants of their icy nuclei.

HD 172555 represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. All of the systems are young, under 40 million years old.

The presence of these doomed comets provides circumstantial evidence for “gravitational stirring” by an unseen Jupiter-size planet, where comets deflected by its gravity are catapulted into the star. These events also provide new insights into the past and present activity of comets in our solar system. It’s a mechanism where infalling comets could have transported water to Earth and the other inner planets of our solar system.

Read more ~ NASA.gov

@exocomets answering on my art blog for consistencies sake

1.) What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do? Depends on what he’s having to stay still for, I imagine he’s moderately patient but doesn’t like to be still for too long

29.) Do they usually live up to their own ideals? I think so?

37.) Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)? I don’t think he cares to learn names unless they’re useful to him, either he writes them down or puts things to melodies because I think that would be cute (what with him being a bird n all)

rich men giving him money and jewels.

🎲 - name a weird skill your s/i has that you don’t.

well none of their skills i would consider 'weird', so unlike me, some of my s/is can sing, or play bass

💗 - what arcs does your Phoenix go through? what do they learn?