comet
Invisible comet tails of mucus slow sinking flakes of ‘marine snow’
WASHINGTON — Tiny, sinking flakes of detritus in the ocean fall more slowly thanks to the goop that surrounds each flake, new observations reveal. The invisible mucus makes “comet tails” that surround each flake, physicist Rahul Chajwa of Stanford University reported November 19 at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting. Those mucus…
Andromedids: See a forgotten meteor shower caused by a dead comet this weekend
A colour lithograph from 1877 depicts the Andromedid meteor shower of 1872 Antiqua Print Gallery/Alamy A “lost” meteor shower may surprise skywatchers this weekend, astronomers have found, with the potential for as many as 200 meteors per hour on 2 December. The shower in question is the Andromedids, which is caused by dust and rocks…