A few days ago Roy Weiler raised the subject of CME and comets on the Suggestions page. A few comments suggest this is a good subject for a post. Putting together something more than a banal show what can be seen elsewhere has taken some time but now I could fairly easily do much the same for other SOHO images. Working within the limitations of WordPress and keeping thing sane sized is fun.
WARNING: LARGE FILESIZES FOLLOW, anyone on dialup, I’ve marked links to large files.
I’ve concentrated on a single sun grazing comet which I think is more interesting than any that smite the sun. Copious other material is linked.
Click to run
10MB GIF animation, runs fast, 0.1s per frame
Keep in mind you are looking at a 2D image, the Z axis is missing and this gives little idea of where the comet is relative to the sun. Perhaps the comet tail is telling a story, rather curiously remaining more or less the same even as the CME thumps the comet (followed by the SOHO camera overloading) , only then does the comet “turn around”. Where exactly was the comet?
Click to run
10MB GIF animation, runs slow, 1s per frame
Both animations run once and stop. Refresh to start again.
Above is for one from this group of comets
The LASCO camera is part of SOHO.
LASCO C3 is a view from 3.5 to 30 solar radii
Are the CME caused by the comets hitting or passing close to the sun?
In the expert opinion of SOHO/LASCO and STEREO/SECCHI comet program, based in the Solar Physics Department of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington D.C. where there is a lot of reading, video, animations, there is no evidence suggesting more than a chance connection. But they are open minded, maybe.
Look at the 3rd Oct 2011 news item which specifically addresses the question.
Source images came from NASA SOHO site follow link to Search & Downloads.
I’m not going to comment now, you decide.
How was this done? Figured out the settings by hand and then Lua scripted Imagemagick. Manufactured and used a reference frame. Pulled black slightly off zero to avoid typical monitor squeeze, gamma left as is.
Post by Tim Channon
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
In the first sequence, I thought there were opposing jets from the comet as it crossed mag lines. I suspect that the passage triggered a loss of “containment”.
Comets and solar CME, is there a connection?
The video evidence from the 1st October appears to be strong…….
However, the Daily Mail reports that perhaps we are not meant to make this connection…
There is a new remarkable article about the electric nature of the recent energy interchange between Comet Elenin and the Sun:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/10/06/comet-elenin%E2%80%94the-debate-that-never-happened/
Dave Talbott says: “Electric comets imply that the Sun is the center of an electric field. It is the most positively charged body in the solar system. A comet approaching the Sun from a much more distant region will carry far more negative charge than those orbiting closer to the Sun.
Comets and solar CME, is there a connection? Translation. Electric charges and solar CME, is there a connection?
The comet Brafield C/1975V2 should come into view of SOHO around November 25, the planet Mercury will be in view between the 1st of December to the 8th of December.
Adolfo,
Carrying a charge into a conducting plasma where high temperature and material loss is taking place won’t happen, will leak fast. In essence it is an electrical emitter (consider a hot cathode but without a connection as such).
A second point a comet is not even a pinhead in relation to the sun, which loses an estimated 4e6 tonnes of matter per second.
About the only rational mechanism I can see is the sun being highly unstable so that it takes very little to trip an energy discharge, which would have happened by some means anyway. what I have in mind is instead of flares we get a cme. However, this ought to be testable, a tripped cme would be followed by slightly low other activity. The alternative is somehow causing excess solar energy loss, which doesn’t seem likely.
Something I didn’t mention to do with the sun grazer is about the comet tail. The medium and far tail remains intact with little change in direction even during the CME, which I find very strange.
In an Aether universe deep space is charge “negative” and matter is chargeless ” positive”. Gravity is the result of this warpage of the diaelectric of matter caused by this charge difference..
tchannon says: “About the only rational mechanism I can see is the sun being highly unstable so that it takes very little to trip an energy discharge, which would have happened by some means anyway.”
Very good, “space” can only maintain the charge difference by charge stratification. A point of charge change or disruption of the layering will cause a flash over. 😎 pg
The video images reminds me of this:
So why does this Comet + CME resemble a high velocity entry/exit wound?
This is comparing apples and pears…
And it is not very scientific…
But…
And how come the comet didn’t burn up long before impact?
Guess it was a Super Huge – Super Heated – Super Homogeneous dirty snowball…
Houston we have a Mary Poppins of a problem here…
Its like trying to describe a Snowball in Hell…
@malagaview says:
October 10, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Trouble is we won´t be able to find icecream in comets anymore …and that´s sad.
Trouble is we won´t be able to find icecream in comets anymore …and that´s sad.
Very sad….
And even sadder for all those nuts sprinkles employed in Houston…
I decided to investigate the 1st Oct event in more depth by measuring the images.
This is an approximate first result, timings are computed.
1. The comet does not seem to accelerate.
2. There are missing image frames. Why?
3. Projecting the comet path and CME timing into the sun intersects at 0.0 which puts the timing of the two events very close together and probably below the photosphere.
4. Comet meeting photosphere @19:20.
5. Image @20:12 shows comet tail undiminished
6. Implied comet at solar centre @20:15
7. Image @20:24 shows sharply reduced comet tail
6. CME left surface @20:45, 30 minutes later, project back to solar centre at @20:30
I considered computing based on pixels but then switched to image import as a reference image in Draftsight where literally dimensioning can be done.
I could rework, bring in other images, lots could be done. Is it worth it?
Expect it gets complicated if the true path is wanted, have to try and figure out in 3D which I am not inclined to do given that professionals probably do this anyway.
Can’t find a definite time for the CME start.
Nice work….
6. Implied comet at solar centre @20:15
…
8. CME left surface @20:45, 30 minutes later, project back to solar centre at @20:30
The voice over talks of an impact at 21:18…. which is probably a rough guess…
However, the CME is very evident in the frame timed at 21:24….
So I guess it is difficult to get good timings without all the frames…
Its a shame they pulled the images… but not a surprise….
Amazing animation of the frames… but without timings 😦
With timings 🙂
Timing implying the solar centre is ridiculous so I assume there is a considerable delay between comet and cme.
What does not make sense in the slightest is the flaming comet tail there just the same when the comet ought to be deep *within* the sun.
Is that is crazy there has to be some other explanation. The first thing which comes to mind is the comet is not aiming at solar centre is actually close to sun grazing, at a tangent, even if it does not look like that from an XY image, no Z is available.
The critical missing images are 21:00 and 21:12 after the CME has emerged which makes it very risky estimating the CME expansion rate.
Tim:
I appreciate the work you have done on this, but still think the possibility comes down to the double strike. It is really quite telling!
A single strike can be a coincidence, a double strike producing the same phenomena? That is what really pushed me over the edge.
This comment I find interesting:
“tchannon says: “About the only rational mechanism I can see is the sun being highly unstable so that it takes very little to trip an energy discharge, which would have happened by some means anyway.”
Take the top off the teapot early?? Steam?? As an analogy of course.
The possible mechanism seems to be magnetic, our auroras are created by such ‘small’ changes in magnetics HHmm.,..
Roy Weiler
[edit: the plot is quick work, some of the data points are computed from slope/offset of actual data, not marked as such]
Redone using near enough pixels. Y-axis zero is photosphere distance.
Unfortunately I cannot see Youtube content.
Can you outline what you mean by double strike please.
Some excellent thoughts in this thread – don’t think the link between comets and bursts of solar activity are a coincidence!
tchannon says:
October 11, 2011 at 12:41 am
“…What does not make sense in the slightest is the flaming comet tail there just the same when the comet ought to be deep *within* the sun.
Is that is crazy there has to be some other explanation. The first thing which comes to mind is the comet is not aiming at solar centre is actually close to sun grazing, at a tangent, even if it does not look like that from an XY image, no Z is available.”
I agree that this is the more probable explanation. Easy to get ambiguous information when observing from the wrong reference frame.
Good paper on this topic for free download here…
Click to access BrownSungrazingCometDestructionTheory.pdf
“Conclusions. Analytic descriptions indicate the (Mo,q) regimes where sublimation, ablation and explosion dominate destruction of sun-grazer/-impactor comets. Extended insolative destruction near the sun is hard to observe. Nuclei with q below 1.01Rsun and Moabove 1E11 g are destroyed catastrophically by ablation or explosion (depending on Mo(cos phi)**3) in the chromosphere, producing fireballs with properties comparable to solar flares but with cometary abundance spectra. Only nuclei more massive than 1E17 g can ever reach the photosphere before exploding.”
Also…
*Cometary Sunquakes and other solar disturbances” The phenomenon of flare induced sunquakes – waves in the photosphere discovered by Kosovichev and Zharkova (1998) and now widely studied (e.g. Kosovichev 2006) should also result from the momentum impulse delivered by a cometary impact. All such impacts, however small the comet mass, involve a huge
kinetic energy density ρv2 ⊙/2 ≈ 1015 erg/cm3. This is ∼ 1010 times the thermal energy density of the photosphere or the magnetic energy density in a sunspot, being the energy density of
a 40 MegaG magnetic field! Even when the kinetic energy is converted by ablation and ram pressure to heat and kinetic energy of explosion, it is initially spread over only a few scale heights. Hence the explosion energy density of a comet like a Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1015 g) is about 106 erg/cm3 or that of a 5 kiloG field and still more than the thermal energy density of the photosphere. Thus, while the total energy of most impacting sun-grazers is small compared to that of large flares and CMEs their energy density is so high that local disruption of magnetic fields and triggering of larger scale events seems likely.”
Perhaps NASA would feel that Brown et al are singing to the wrong hymn-sheet… 🙂
@Roy Weiler
“The high velocity electrons collide with a metal target, the anode, creating the X-rays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray
“As above so below”
The outcome depends on the potential difference not of the pebble size.
Adolfo,
The question seems to be, what is the maximum voltage a body can carry, which is related to the amount of energy carried in the charge.
Which can carry more, a shipping container sized object or something the size of a planet?
In electrostatics a basic rule is the maximum voltage is set by the radius of the object, a needle point leaks at lowish voltage.
I don’t *know* the answer so perhaps someone else does.
@tchannon:
It depends on the power from the “mains”, from “outside”the solar system….and the smaller the “wavelength” (diameter) the higher the energy (Planck´s equation).
I found the following in E.M.Smith site: http://youtu.be/XVBEwn6iWOo
quite a big trouble to explain a “double layer”. The same law everywhere: charges.
http://www.giurfa.com/unified_field_explained.pptx
Tenuc,
Ah ha. “with cometary abundance spectra” in other words some kind of data ought to be measurable if a solar collision can be seen by suitable instruments. I forgot that.
Like it says I’d expect a comet to go bang and whilst we cannot see past the lascar exclusion disc the comet tail can be seen. I’m very puzzled on how there can be a sustained tail and with no sign of an abrupt bang. Bet there is a tale in this. (had an idea)
A rapidly moving *highly ionising* object lets say traversing solar stratification, perhaps it might act as a trigger, tripping a short circuit (at this level electricity is involved) and excess energy dissipation, kaboom we have a CME.
It would be very interesting to know the exact path of that comet.
It might be that the key is a matter of waiting for charm, one of those chance captures of a critical moment.
Too many might, would, if, but, maybe.
Perhaps keep in mind that the professional science types will have plenty of posits and ideas on what is going on but will keep their mouth shut, is not the British Met Office or climate types. We don’t have more than an ego to hurt by collecting feet in mouth in public.
tchannon says:
October 11, 2011 at 2:39 pm
“Like it says I’d expect a comet to go bang and whilst we cannot see past the lascar exclusion disc the comet tail can be seen. I’m very puzzled on how there can be a sustained tail and with no sign of an abrupt bang. Bet there is a tale in this. (had an idea)”
I expect the large plasma ball surrounding the comet core would be sufficient to trigger solar activity as it skims across the solar surface, and interferes with the sun’s fragile double plasma layer.
It is probable, I think, this close to the sun the tail is caused by the comet developing some sort of magnetosphere which concentrates and deflects the solar atmosphere around itself forming the tail. I also suspect that comets don’t always explode, rather they expand into a large, very hot plasma ball. Due to the very high temperatures and pressures involved there could be some exiting new physics to be discovered if we’re ever lucky enough to get good observations of these events.
Don’t worry about the persistence of the tail. It is just smoke on the wind and not actually attached to the coma body,
As to a charged body, “free electrons” carriers of charge, collect at the surface and leak from sharper radii areas. The interiour area is mostly devoid of free charge, is positive. Electrons, units of charge, push against each other to escape. Matter has electron shells tied to protons and little in the way of free charge units. When charge units “electrons” escape they hitch rides on matter as they need proton masking to move into the Aether that resists them. Gravity attempts to suck/push matter back into a ball. pg
Whoa. Thought I’d plot the comet head position as extrapolated.
Fine, no problem.
Now for the twist. As we can see the comet develops a huge flaming main tail, with the usual plasma like diffuse longer tail remaining. After the comet vanishes behind the exclusion disc the tail remains. Measure the tail and then extrapolate where the comet head would be. This pretty much matches.
Would take some time to do a detail job.
Been searching for solar images taken at the right time looking for clues. Murphy’s law states it touched down behind visible from earth.
Found the CME lifting off, origin site is just out of view.
Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, CHIPS, Helium I, can see material ejection and time resolution is good.
http://mlso.hao.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/mlso_datasum.cgi?2011&10&1&CHIP
Go to 1st Oct get the image directory, Image 20:20UT, East side, and images thereabouts.
I think comet didn’t impact, its trajectory was curved by the sun’s gravity and it was on its way, with the tail greatly reduced in size, but pointing away from the sun as expected. You can follow it on from 14/21 or time lapse (21:24:09), approximately at 8 o’clock direction.
@ Tenuc
I also suspect that comets don’t always explode, rather they expand into a large, very hot plasma ball.
I was thinking along the same lines….
A high velocity dense plasma ball entering the less dense photosphere…
A high velocity plasma ball that did not have a full metal jacket…
A high velocity plasma ball that created a large entry wound…
My guess is that it then dissipated like a dum-dum bullet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet
The high velocity plasma ball that transferred a lot of kinetic energy into the atmosphere…
And this kinetic energy seems to have determined the location of the exit wound CME…
My guess is that the kinetic energy from the entry wound generated a large radiating shock wave…
The shock wave would then travel around the sun in the atmosphere…
A compressive shock wave converging on a point 180 degrees opposite the entry wound…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_wound
However, the scale and duration of the exit wound CME suggests that the shock wave triggered the electromagnetic forces associated with CMEs… so comets can trigger CMEs… but are not the only cause of CMEs… so avoid the mis-direction when people argue that some CMEs are not associated with comets… no problem… but this one was… I have so far failed to find any intelligent counter argument from the usual suspects.
@malagaview says:
October 12, 2011 at 8:20 am
…..and it would seem as a hollow sphere with a tiny electrode at the center…
tchannon:
Can you view this link?
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/bestofsoho/Movies/2comets_C2/2comets_C2.mpg
I was referring to the two comets hitting one right after the other. Followed by two CME’s.
Roy Weiler
???
Roy,
No problem. It is only Abobe software and Google software and practices which are a problem. Google own Youtube. I don’t want to go into detail but this is about security and about disability.
Not looked in detail at the two comet event.
With Tallbloke away I’m finding it difficult to actually look at things and keep the place off stale.
The event I have looked at in detail is left now with rather close timing and locations but I have not seen the video Vuk posted.
Tenuc:
“Thus, while the total energy of most impacting sun-grazers is small compared to that of large flares and CMEs their energy density is so high that local disruption of magnetic fields and triggering of larger scale events seems likely.”
That is an interesting little nugget.
It seems to me the Stereo satellites should be able to give a clearer picture of these events, as we could see the approach from two different angles. I have not been able to find any movies from Stereo so far.
Roy Weiler
Malagaview:
Is that directed at me? Does the link not work?
Roy Weiler
Discover actually did a piece on this event and has a video with all three angles. Definitely looks less conclusive.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/10/04/the-comet-and-the-coronal-mass-ejection/
Roy Weiler
@Roy Weiler In the video you give Phil Plait says that some comets do not produce any CME´s and there are some that survive the encounter; what is logical, assuming the EU explanation, is that as the higher its eccentricity, the greatest its charge; thus those which “survive” or do not produce any CME´s are those with a less charged body.
@adolfo
Interesting idea. This does seem to fall into the realm of the EU idea. I have looked at the EU theory a bit, and the one thing I find lacking is observational evidence to support it, specifically in real time. For instance, I read about the idea that the Valles Marineris was created by a huge electrical arc. If that is true, should not we be able to observe that phenomena in our solar system, or perhaps others. Does it only happen at a certain times in the birth of a solar system? It would seem we should be able to see this happening somewhere, other then just in the implied effect of a nova or supernova.
Do not get me wrong, I find certain elements attractive, but there has to be an observational theory, of some sort, that we can look for. Are comets creating CME’s a possible observation confirming it? Maybe, but there are other less complicated explanations, so the ‘proof’ must lie elsewhere, no?
Incidentally, following the links provided by tchannon above, I did learn something I did not realize namely, the time involved. I had not realized that the SOHO movies are taking place over hours, this really makes the connection more transient in that there is a substantial time lag between comet arrival and CME. At least it can be inferred, and there is substantial distance. In order to move this forward we would need to establish charge (due to eccentricity), optimum angle of approach, optimum distance, and possible time lag.
I did find compelling the argument that, during active cycles, the sun emits 1-2 CME’s per hour, and that this makes the odds of a CME happening at the time of a comet approach rather likely with no direct relationship.
Overall an interesting discussion none the less!
Roy Weiler
P.S. When does Tallbloke get back from wherever he is? I am not trying to be nosy, just curious.
@Roy: “Deep Impact” the NASA test to impact with a solid copper cylinder the surface of the comet Temple 1 surprised everybody as a flash was recorded BEFORE contact:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=nq9zna2m
Roy, followed this through as best I can to Stereo.
What is being shown is sloppy, classic dissing. On close examination far from dismissing the comet CME connection all this shows is as suspected the comet is aiming to miss or graze the sun.
The trajectory seems to be aiming at the root of the CME and from the extrapolation the timing is right.
There is no sign of much curvature due to gravity.
One very strange thing which has to completely befuddled is one of the image sets only shows a bright comet tail well *after* it has vanished on the other image sets, There is no chance the clock is an hour out so… umm. Unravelling this ought to help.
What I need must exist but very likely inaccessible: the visualisation software which translates an image set into a near 3D location. (I say near because we are one satellite short) It should then be possible to track features in time and space.
There is no way I am putting several years work into the paid work of others.
A thought is whether bubble chamber and detector software from nuclear accelerators is available which could do much the same.
Where is our host? Not at liberty to say.
Adolfo:
In the link you offer (and subsequent google searches) I have not been able to find a video of the ‘electrical discharge’ that was to have occurred before the cylinder hit comet Temple 1. Can you provide a direct link to the event?
If this has been covered and linked previously, I apologize in advance. Please forgive my ignorance.
Roy Weiler
Tim:
I appreciate your efforts, and wish I could do more to further the idea. Have you viewed the double strike? Does it offer more or less support for the idea that comets can create CME’s?
Roy Weiler
Roy,
Nope. If the event you mean is 1998 June 1st here is Lascar C2 in a PDF for examination.
Click to access lascar-c2-1998-06-01.pdf
1. Be careful over time, the time resolution is worse than the later archives.
2. Note these comets have a path strongly curved by solar gravity.
3. Excuse my French, but what the F are the points of light which seem to scatter? Matter cannot jump out into space that fast. The opinion that the first comet explodes seems reasonable.
4. The curved path might curve debris right around the sun.
Straight PDF is trivial. Hand plotting paths is not.
FYI, those of you in Europe can reduce transatlantic traffic by using the mirror at
http://soho.esac.esa.int/data/data.html
But there again as a ‘net veteran, routing can be bizarre.
Tim
Tungsten-sapphire sun probe, coming right up (2018):
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/brilliant-10-sun-diver
To find out what that “puff” was when the comet nose-dived.
Tim:
“3. Excuse my French, but what the F are the points of light which seem to scatter? Matter cannot jump out into space that fast. The opinion that the first comet explodes seems reasonable.”
My understanding (if I am viewing the same points of light as you) is they are an artifact of the detection method. They are particles (I cannot remember photons, electrons, neutrinos, something) hitting the detector. I will try to re-find what the particles are.
Roy Weiler
Tim:
Ah Ha!! Found it:
“Cosmic rays: High energy particles from the solar wind, and from the galaxy as a whole, whip around the SOHO spacecraft and interact with the detectors. These produce spots and streaks on the detector ranging from a single pixel, to large streaks that span a large fraction of the image. These are most evident during a solar storm, as can be seen on this Hot Shot page, but are always present at some level. I know that some people have claimed that they’ve seen spacecraft-looking things that seem to be moving around, but which are obviously cosmic rays when examined by an experienced observer. People see a cosmic ray at one location in one image, and then another random cosmic ray hit nearby in the next image, and claim they’re both the same thing moving between frames.
Sometimes you’ll see a cosmic ray seem to persist in the web images for two or more frames. This is because we lose a certain percentage of the data coming down from the spacecraft. In LASCO such losses appear as square blocks in the image. The software which puts the images up on the web will fill in these blocks from the last good image, and if there’s a cosmic ray in that block from the previous image, it will appear in this image as well. The way to check for this is to look at the raw data files, which are also available on the web through the SOHO catalog interface. ”
Roy Weiler
Adolfo (you may not have seen this the first time)
:
In the link you offer (and subsequent google searches) I have not been able to find a video of the ‘electrical discharge’ that was to have occurred before the cylinder hit comet Temple 1. Can you provide a direct link to the event?
If this has been covered and linked previously, I apologize in advance. Please forgive my ignorance.
Roy Weiler
Brian:
“Tungsten-sapphire sun probe, coming right up (2018):”
I just saw this recently too, ALWAYS love new information!
Roy Weiler
@Roy. More on Deep Impact probe: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=3kneumjj
I am aware of that. Maybe I am seeing patterns in nothing.
Solar events causing an excess of radiation will happen.
Nothing unusual here
Oulu
[edit] Query Oulu here http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
I think you can insert images into posts but you have to be exactly accurate. (we get to edit mistakes)
Like this and max width is 500 pixels
Why is the double HTML link to the source image necessary? That’s just redoubleduncedancy.
That is the full version.
Is a link (a and href) to something elsewhere plus optional image (img) to actually display on this page, with width limit and link text. In effect you get a clickable thumbnail. Could href to a web page or could href to a web page with display text for link (hide long url).
One typo and it is broken. Moderator has to edit.
WordPress only allows some things. Writing down what definitely works is a good idea.
New setup online.
Stay tuned
[…] passes overhead. This is more evidence for a link between sungrazing comets and CME’s last discussed here in late […]
[…] passes overhead. This is more evidence for a link between sungrazing comets and CME’s last discussed here in late […]