{"id":25177,"date":"2022-10-08T04:56:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-08T04:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=25177"},"modified":"2022-10-08T04:56:49","modified_gmt":"2022-10-08T04:56:49","slug":"two-comets-in-southern-skies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=25177","title":{"rendered":"Two Comets in Southern Skies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img src='https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/image\/2210\/2017K2_2022-09-21_web.jpg' style='max-width:600px;' \/><\/p>\n<div>Heading for its closest approach to the Sun or perihelion on December 20, comet C\/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) remains a sight for telescopic observers as it sweeps through planet Earth&#8217;s southern hemisphere skies. First time visitor from the remote Oort cloud this comet PanSTARRS sports a greenish coma and whitish dust tail about half a degree long at the upper left in a deep image from September 21. It also shares the starry field of view toward the constellation Scorpius with another comet, 73P\/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, seen about 1 degree below and right of PanSTARRS. Astronomers estimate that first time visitor comet C\/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) has been inbound from the Oort cloud for some 3 million years along a hyperbolic orbit. Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is more familiar though. The periodic comet loops through its own elliptical orbit, from just beyond the orbit of Jupiter to the vicinity of Earth&#8217;s orbit, once every 5.4 years. Just passing in the night, this comet PanSTARRS is about 20 light-minutes from Earth in the September 21 image. Seen to be disintegrating since 1995, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 was about 7.8 light-minutes away. via NASA <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap221008.html\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heading for its closest approach to the Sun or perihelion on December 20, comet C\/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) remains a sight for telescopic observers as it sweeps through planet Earth&#8217;s southern <a href=\"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=25177\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10,12],"class_list":["entry","author-admin","post-25177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-whatsup","tag-ifttt","tag-nasa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25178,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25177\/revisions\/25178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}