Karl Battams
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Karl Battams
@sungrazercomets.bsky.social
Astrophysicist. PI of SOHO/LASCO & Sungrazer Project, studying mostly comets, asteroids, Sun and misc heliophysics stuff. Personal account; all opinions mine.
Yeah, that paper and this one - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - give some details (I was co-author on both). In short: comet loses dust chunk; chunk falls apart; chunks of the chunk fall apart; chunks of the chunks of the chunk fall apart... etc... aka "cascading fragmentation".
Fine-scale structure in cometary dust tails II: Further evidence for a solar wind influence on cometary dust dynamics from the analysis of striae in comet C/2011 L4 Pan-STARRS
Striated features, or striae, form in cometary dust tails due to an as-yet not fully constrained process or processes. Using STEREO-B SECCHI HI-1 inst…
www.sciencedirect.com
January 17, 2025 at 12:28 AM
Individual curves are here: lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=... I could probably plot them... As for the original purpose of them... 🤷 I can ask some of the retirees what the thinking was.

PUNCH images would look a lot like C3 Clear, but with a wider fov.
January 14, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Yes!! Plus... SOHO was actually "lost" for ~3 months in '98, spinning out of control, and effectively frozen solid. The recovery was nothing short of miraculous! A great account of it can be found in "Saving SOHO", linked via: soho.nascom.nasa.gov/about/Recove...
January 14, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Yep, that processing is equally fantastic. It's all fantastic! 😊
January 14, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Here's the last frame in the sequence, minus the mp4/streaming compression. Still a tad over-exposed in my processing, but certainly much better than the default processing we see on the SOHO site.
January 14, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Yeah there's a lot going on in these images - I don't want to speculate too much on exactly what. This is a particularly special comet for sure, though. And we will absolutely miss LASCO when it's gone ☹️
January 13, 2025 at 11:56 PM
AAARRGHHH!!!!! 🤬😖😫

Yes it should. Sigh.
January 13, 2025 at 9:23 PM
No problem! The wikipedia article is pretty good: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2024_...

Be skeptical of media sources (some are great, others less so), and always feel free to reach out with questions!
January 13, 2025 at 8:09 PM
☹️ Worth a shot! One day, hopefully we'll have a sungrazer we can all see in the daytime!
January 13, 2025 at 7:16 PM
That's still unknown. It's possible, but the LASCO cameras don't have the kind of resolution to tell us that. We might have clues in the next few days... Maybe...
January 13, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Yeah I don't think it's quite naked eye. It's like vmag -2.5 or so. LASCO images look amazing tho!
January 13, 2025 at 6:05 PM
I've seen several images from folks capturing it during the daytime, so it is *technically* possible! Just of course take all the kind of precautions you'd expect to take when pointing magnifying optics near the Sun...😵😬 And report back if you get it! 😊
January 13, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Karl Battams
The Comet Observer’s Data Base (COBS) currently lists the comet at magnitude -3.7 ‘with a bullet’. Petr Horálek snapped this view of the comet at sunrise on January 11th over Spisske Podrhadie, Slovakia:
January 12, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Zoomed in. No processing at all
January 12, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Karl Battams
The comet has been imaged during the day by Nick James, Chelmsford, UK. See groups.io/g/comets-ml/...
Elongation ~8°. Max mag expected on Jan 12/13.
Note: Never look directly at the Sun with the naked eye or with any unfiltered optical device, such as binoculars or a telescope!
☄️🔭 #CometWatch
January 11, 2025 at 3:13 PM