Related papers: Comets in ancient India
Remote investigations of the ancient solar system matter has been traditionally carried out through the observations of long-period (LP) comets that are less affected by solar irradiation than the short-period counterparts orbiting much…
For more than 50,000 years, Indigenous Australians have incorporated celestial events into their oral traditions and used the motions of celestial bodies for navigation, time-keeping, food economics, and social structure. In this paper, we…
The rareness of nearby supernovae ensures particular value to the historic records for determination of their light curves. We provide the translation of 13th century Armenian chronicle of Hetum, which by its unexpected association to…
The so-called Miccinelli documents are a set of documents which were written by Jesuit scholars in Peru within the first half of the 17th century. Among such documents, one contains the depiction of a Quipu, that is, a device made out of…
Drain away the earth's oceans and a global pattern of great ridges appears. Adjacent to these continental and undersea mountain ranges are layers of silt and clay, so thick that they fill the gaps between ridges, creating extensive…
We present the results of our orbital computations in support of the recently proposed contact-binary model for the Kreutz sungrazer system (Sekanina 2021, 2022). We demonstrate that comet Ikeya-Seki (C/1965 S1) previously passed perihelion…
The composition of cometary ices provides key information on the thermal and chemical properties of the outer parts of the protoplanetary disk where they formed 4.6 Gy ago. This chapter reviews our knowledge of composition of cometary comae…
NASA's Stardust mission returned rocky material from the coma of comet 81P/Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt 2") to Earth for laboratory study on January 15, 2006. Comet Wild 2 contains volatile ices and likely accreted beyond the orbit of Neptune.…
In his 1981 article, Roberts highlights the term 'stellify' defined as "to transform (a person or thing) into a star or constellation, to place among the stars." Using the case of the Tabwa people of central Africa, not the Democratic…
The study of comets affords a unique window into the birth, infancy, and subsequent history of the solar system. There is strong evidence that comets incorporated pristine interstellar material as well as processed nebular matter, providing…
We report the discovery of a comet-like tail on asteroid (3200) Phaethon when imaged at optical wavelengths near perihelion. In both 2009 and 2012, the tail appears >=350" (2.5x10^8 m) in length and extends approximately in the projected…
Small bodies in the solar system are conventionally classified into asteroids and comets. However, it is recently found that a small number of objects can exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets. Some are more consistent with…
The celestial phenomenon have always been a source of wonder and interest to people, even as long ago as the ancient Egyptians. While the ancient Egyptians did not know all the things about astronomy that we do now, they had a good…
The discovery of past spikes in atmospheric radiocarbon activity, caused by major solar energetic particle events, has opened up new possibilities for high-precision chronometry. The two spikes, or Miyake Events, have now been widely…
A mysterious increase of radiocarbon 14C ca. 775 AD in the Earth's atmosphere has been recently found by Miyake et al. (Nature, 486, 240, 2012). A possible source of this event has been discussed widely, the most likely being an extreme…
A bombardment of comets is thought to have occurred in the inner solar system as a result of a dynamical instability among the giant planets after gas disk dispersal. Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt, likely…
Comets, asteroids and moons that orbit stars and planets exterior to our solar system are prefixed with "exo". While the existence of these objects is certain, our understanding of their physical properties, composition, and diversity is…
The Rosetta mission and its exquisite measurements have revived the debate on whether comets are pristine planetesimals or collisionally evolved objects. We investigate the collisional evolution experienced by the precursors of current…
Main sequence stars, like the Sun, are often found to be orbited by circumstellar material that can be categorized into two groups, planets and debris. The latter is made up of asteroids and comets, as well as the dust and gas derived from…
Essentially everything of astronomical interest is either part of a galaxy, or from a galaxy, or otherwise relevant to the origin or evolution of galaxies. Diverse examples are that the isotropic composition of meteorites provides clues to…