Comet Spring Siding (C/2013 A1) set for a close shave with Mars

[Bateleur]

Anyone else keeping an eye on this?

Comet is currently about 40' North of the Butterfly Cluster. Pretty dim at a mag. of about 9.8 which makes viewing it from light polluted areas very difficult. Set to pass by Mars on October 19 ( @ 20h30 SAST and North Eastern SA is perfectly positioned for best viewing) - apparently so close that NASA have moved all their satellites to the other side of the planet for fear of damage from all the dust particles in the tail.

Interest sake:
- it's shedding approx. 100kg of "dust" per second and each dust particle is moving at about 56 km/sec.
- It'll be passing about 140 000km from the center point of mars although initial estimates where that there was a very good chance it would actually impact Mars
- Were it to be passing by earth, it would pass between the moon and the earth at about 1/3rd of the distance to the moon.

[EduardC1]

Very interesting

[C Africa]

Seeing as this is a Mars fred, can I post this here?

http://www.mweb.co.za/TechnoZone/Vie...from-Mars.aspx


What I like about this is that some amateur astronomer found this and he has scientists denying its existence because it is so difficult to explain.

Yet it has been corroborated. There sure are some mysteries still to be solved.

C