When a new comet appears in the sky, there is usually excitement. But things do not always end well for these old heavenly things, made of ice, frozen gases and rocks, when you approach the sun – and It seems that an early end was the fate of the Cometa C/2025 F2 (SWAN).
All signs indicate that The heavenly organismQicheng Zang, a post -doctoral researcher who studies small bodies at the Observatory of Loile in Flagstav, Arizona, said that it resembles a spread green spot, disintegrated in recent days.
Dr. Karl Batams, an account scientist in the American Physics Department in Washington, DC, said that the latest land statements of telescopes indicate that the comet has broken. Additional notes will help confirm whether the disintegration is the real cause of the outward explosion and the guilty grievance.
“There is a cloud of remaining dust that must remain visible telescope for a few other weeks, but it spreads and disappears.”
Before disintegration, part of the expectations about the comet was the fact that it was only discovered recently, and that the closest path to the sun on May 1 will have a unique observation opportunity, and may not appear again hundreds of thousands of years – or leave the solar system completely.
The organism bears its name from the contrast of solar winds, or swan, on the solar and Hsifieri Observatory, or Soho, a joint venture for the European Space Agency and NASA.
Vladimir Vladimir of Ukraine and Michael Matiazo from Australia and Rob Matson from the United States were seen and independently reported the object, known as the comet Swan or Swan 25F, while analyzing the photos taken by the swan instrument in late March. The Minor Planet Center has officially appointed W/2025 F2 (SWAN) on April 8.
The three astronomers noticed “a faded spot, which indicates a comet, which seemed to be moving across the sky for a few days.”
“Since he was not known in that part of the sky at that moment, they assumed that it was a new discovery,” Patms said.
Battams is also the main researcher in the large and spectral corner tool group, a group of three telescopes on the SOHO spacecraft that takes pictures of the solar atmosphere.
How to monitor the comet w/2025 F2 (SWAN)
Batams said by email that the comet “will only be visible from the northern hemisphere until early May, and then gradually appear in the sky of the southern hemisphere.”
From early May, the comet will be visible from the southern hemisphere Soon after sunset, over the horizon line west, near the bull constellation. Every day, it should appear in a louder voice in the sky.
Retailing comet
Some reports showed that The first comet shine Batams said that he slowly decreased in recent days. Astronomers now realize that this slight shading may have already been a sign of the fate of the comet.
“It is possible that the increase in brightness after the discovery of the comet, in fact, is the comet that began to disintegrate,” said Zang by email. “When they break at first, they display all the ice inside the sun, causing it to become a gas (which we saw as the green shine that made the guilty shiny) simultaneously.”
He said that with the end of the ice, the gas gradually stops its release, and the comet is oppressed. “It seems that we are now at the point where the ice/gas has ended, so all that remains is dust.”
Astronomers suspect that the comet came from the Ort cloud, a tank of cold bodies that are believed to be on the edge of our solar system, outside the sun.
“From time to time, the cloud comet is pushed in OORT Cloud” from this tank and begins to fall towards the sun. “We believe that this comet was heading to the solar system about 35,000 years ago, although it is difficult to be very accurate about these numbers.”
Earthsky said recent notes indicate that the comet complements an orbit around the sun every 2.1 million years.
As comets approach the sun, the warmth of our star release gas and dust, providing their tail properties.
Large comets, which are heavier, do not usually disintegrate with the sun approaching. Zang said it is more common for smaller comets, because with gases, heavenly things rotate quickly until they were shattered.
“The extreme solar radiation was more than this comet, which this comet could bear,” Patms said. “Scientists are still trying to know the details of the causes of demonstration like this. It is definitely a mixture of factors or processes, but everything is basically due to the comet that contains a very disturbing surface/composition approaching the sun.
Last October, the “Halloween comet” was dismantled during his nearest approach to the sun.
The object, also known as the COTET C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), was discovered on September 27 and soon obtained his title after speculation that he could be visible in the night sky near the end of October. But as the comet approaches the sun, he stormed the pieces until it finally evaporated, according to NASA.
OC/2024 S1 was a shallow guilty, a guilty that passes through a distance 1.367.942 Kilometers from the sun. Breaks are often evacuated due to the extreme solar atmosphere.
The comet was expected to ride C/2025 F2 (SWAN) 50 million km of the sun in May.
A new guilty discovery
Zang said that the Swan tool was not designed to detect comets in the night sky, but it contributed to the discovery of 16 guilty to this day.
“It is a unique tool designed to draw a map of hydrogen in our solar system by monitoring a specific type of light that is separated by neutral hydrogen atoms,” Patar said in an e -mail. “But comets coincide with being a very rich source of hydrogen – mainly by water or water that is evaporated by the sun – and therefore they often shine a lot in swan images.”
Zang watched the comet for the first time on April 2 and I saw it twice since. He took pictures of a part of the sky where it should be the comet, based on common coordinates by those who brought it up using SWAN data, and monitoring the heavenly organism.
Batams said that Zang was the first to notice him from the ground after the discovery of amateur astronomers, and his notes were decisive to allow other astronomers to refer to their telescopes to the right site.
The astronomer Gianluka Massi also noticed the comet twice using a telescope in Maniano, Italy. Masi runs the virtual telescope project, which provides views of the automatic telescope that is controlled by the Internet.
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