C / 1946 K1 (Pajdusakova-Rotbart-Weber)
| C / 1946 K1 (Pajdusakova-Rotbart-Weber) [i] | |
|---|---|
| Properties of the orbit ( animation ) | |
| Orbit type | parabolic |
| Numerical eccentricity | 1.0 |
| Perihelion | 1.018 AU |
| Inclination of the orbit plane | 169.6 ° |
| Perihelion | May 11, 1946 |
| Orbital velocity in the perihelion | 41.7 km / s |
| history | |
| Explorer | Ludmila Pajdušáková , David Rotbart, Anton Weber |
| Date of discovery | May 30, 1946 |
| Older name | 1946 II, 1946 d |
| Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles . | |
C / 1946 K1 (Pajdusakova-Rotbart-Weber) is a comet that could be observed with the naked eye in 1946 .
Discovery and observation
The Slovak astronomer Ľ. Pajdušáková discovered the comet at the Skalnaté Pleso observatory during a routine search with a comet finder shortly after midnight on May 30, 1946 in the constellation Swan . She estimated the brightness to be 8 mag and already recognized a tail almost 1 ° long .
About six and a half hours later, American amateur astronomer D. Rotbart also spotted the comet while observing the sky with binoculars. He estimated the brightness to be 6 mag.
The third independent discovery of the comet came in an unusual way. Anton Weber was a very active German amateur astronomer in the 1930s to 50s; in 1933 he was (co-) discoverer of the "Weber spot" on Saturn . In the post-war - Berlin he lived in a heavily damaged home in Steglitz , possessed the barely intact window. Shortly after midnight on May 31st, he was sitting on his toilet and looking through one of those windowless holes when he saw a diffuse object with the naked eye. He got binoculars , made sure it was a comet, and called the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT).
The comet had already passed its closest point to the Sun 3 weeks earlier and was about to come closest to Earth . At the beginning of June he was observed by many observers in the USA, Germany and Belgium . Its brightness was around 6 mag, but it was easy to see with the naked eye, its tail was 1 ° long. In the second week of June, the brightness and length of the tail slowly decreased again; in mid-June the brightness was already below 9 mag. The last observation was made on July 29, 1946 at the McDonald Observatory in Texas at a brightness of 15.5 mag.
Scientific evaluation
At the Sonneberg observatory , Paul Oswald Ahnert was able to obtain a spectroscopic image of the comet, which showed strong emission lines of CN in a continuous spectrum , but no carbon bands.
Orbit
For the comet, Brian Marsden was able to determine only a relatively imprecise parabolic orbit that is inclined by around 170 ° to the ecliptic from 49 observation data over a period of 57 days . The orbit of the comet is thus slightly inclined to the orbits of the planets and it runs its orbit in the opposite direction ( retrograde ) to them. At the point closest to the Sun ( perihelion ), which the comet passed on May 11, 1946, it was still about 152.3 million km from the Sun and was thus roughly in the range of the earth's orbit. Previously, on May 1, it had already approached Mercury to about 89.1 million km. On June 1, the closest approach to Earth was made to a distance of about 24.1 million km (0.16 AU ). On July 8th it passed Venus at a distance of about 107.7 million km and on July 30th it passed Mars at a distance of about 40.9 million km.
In the vicinity of the ascending node of its orbit, the comet even approached the earth's orbit to about 5 million km (0.03 AU) around April 26, 1946, but the earth only reached this point in its orbit 3 months later.
Not only did the comet approach some of the small planets within close proximity, but it also made numerous approaches to the large planets, some of them extraordinarily close:
| date | planet | Min. Distance (in AU) |
|---|---|---|
| May 30, 1941 | Uranus | 6.2 |
| August 24, 1942 | Jupiter | 8.7 |
| April 8, 1943 | Saturn | 2.9 |
| September 4, 1946 | Jupiter | 3.7 |
| June 25, 1948 | Saturn | 1.1 |
| 23rd August 1954 | Uranus | 4.9 |
Due to the gravitational pull of these planets, especially when they walked relatively close to Jupiter and Saturn, the eccentricity of the comet's orbit was increased by about 0.0011. Due to the imprecise initial data, however, it cannot be said whether the comet is now leaving the solar system on a hyperbolic orbit or whether it is still moving on a closed elliptical orbit.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ A b G. Merton: Reports on the Progress of Astronomy - Comets. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Volume 107, No. 1, 1947, pp. 104-114 doi: 10.1093 / mnras / 107.1.104 . ( PDF; 504 kB )
- ^ A b Gary W. Kronk: Cometography - A Catalog of Comets. Volume 4: 1933-1959 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-58507-1 , pp. 231-234.
- ↑ C / 1946 K1 (Pajdusakova-Rotbart-Weber) in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).
- ↑ A. Vitagliano: SOLEX 12.1. Retrieved July 9, 2020 .