Article ID: CBB168539130

Enigmatic Nebulous Companions to the Great September Comet of 1882 as Soho-Like Kreutz Sungrazers Caught in Terminal Outburst (2023)

unapi

I investigate the nature of the transient nebulous companions to the sungrazing comet C/1882 R1, known as the Great September Comet. The features were located several degrees to the southwest of the comet's head and reported independently by four observers, including J.F.J. Schmidt and E.E. Barnard, over a period of ten days nearly one month after perihelion, when the comet was 0.7 AU to 1 AU from the Sun. I conclude that none of the nebulous companions was ever sighted more than once and that, contrary to his belief, Schmidt observed unrelated objects on the four consecutive mornings. Each nebulous companion is proposed to have been triggered by a fragment at most a few tens of meters across, released from the comet's nucleus after perihelion and seen only because it happened to be caught in the brief terminal outburst, when its mass was suddenly shattered into a cloud of mostly microscopic debris due possibly to rotational bursting triggered by sublimation torques. The fragment's motion was affected by a strong outgassing-driven nongravitational acceleration with a significant out-of-plane component. Although fragmentation events were common, only a small fraction of nebulous companions was detected because of their transient nature. The observed brightness of the nebulous companions is proposed to have been due mainly to C2 emissions, with a contribution from scattering of sunlight by the microscopic dust. By their nature, the fragments responsible for the nebulous companions bear a strong resemblance to the dwarf Kreutz sungrazers detected with the coronagraphs aboard the SOHO space probe. Only their fragmentation histories are different and the latter display no terminal outburst, a consequence of extremely short lifetimes of the sublimating icy and refractory material in the Sun's corona.

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Authors & Contributors
Kragh, Helge S.
Ashbrook, Joseph
Becker, Barbara J.
Bryan, James
Charbonneau, Paul
Clark, Stuart
Journals
Journal for the History of Astronomy
Sky and Telescope
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
Acta Historica Astronomiae
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Publishers
Springer
Princeton University Press
Vuibert
Springer International Publishing
Concepts
Astronomy
Sun
Discovery in science
Comets; meteors; meteorites
Amateurs
Astronomical observatories
People
Barnard, Edward Emerson
Schmidt, Johann Friedrich Julius
Argelander, Friedrich Wilhelm August
Bethe, Hans Albrecht
Carrington, Richard Christopher
Eddington, Arthur Stanley
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
16th century
17th century
Places
Great Britain
Vietnam
Hungary
Portugal
Institutions
Lick Observatory
Royal Astronomical Society
Bonn University
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