Few viewing opportunities for comet’s Martian flyby

At a recent NASA news conference addressing Sunday’s flyby of the comet Siding Spring past Mars, one participant explained that it would be happening “about halfway through the first football game” of the day.

Perhaps Padma Yanamandra-Fisher, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute, was simply acknowledging that many people might be more focused Sunday on the flights of ovoid cowhide hurled 50 yards downfield than balls of ice and dust hurtling out of the Oort Cloud, and past the Red Planet, at 126,000 mph.

But the fact is, viewing opportunities for the Comet C/2013 A1, known popularly as Siding Spring for the Australian observatory that first detected it in January of last year, will be few.

For example, NASA will not be streaming any footage of the event in real time. And nothing is planned for the event at the University of Colorado’s Fiske Planetarium or Sommers-Bausch Observatory.

As for the naked eye, the comet might be seen with binoculars or telescope — but only if you’re in the far Southern Hemisphere, in a location such as South America, South Africa or Australia.

“It’s really not that super a comet,” said Doug Duncan, director of Fiske Planetarium. “We’re kind of overdue for a really good comet, but this is not it. This is a wimpy comet.”

He added, “Obviously, if you were right in the path of the comet, you wouldn’t think it was wimpy.”

The reason you might have been hearing a lot about this “wimpy” comet is that it is cruising within only about 87,000 miles of Mars, only about a month after the CU-directed Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission entered Martian orbit for the start of its year-long probe of the mysteries of the planet’s upper atmosphere.

The presence of MAVEN and other space assets in Martian orbit, as well as the rovers Curiosity and Opportunity on its surface, has NASA, and others with a stake in ongoing Martian exploration, just a bit nervous.

Accordingly, MAVEN and other spacecraft will be parked temporarily on the far side of Mars from the approach of Siding Spring. They’ll be using the planet’s mass to shield the multi-million-dollar space assets from high-velocity ice and dust particles flying off the comet — which has a nucleus less than a mile in diameter — as it passes.

Scientists have said that the risk to spacecraft at Mars is low, but not nonexistent.

“In 1910, the Earth went right through the tail of Halley’s Comet, and nobody died. Nothing happened. That’s why passing kind of near a comet is pretty much a non-event,” Duncan said.

The danger comes from the incredible speed involved, should any of its material strike something.

“They go really fast — (a speed equivalent to traveling) from Denver to Boulder in one second,” Duncan said.

That’s why, Duncan added, “If you have an expensive spacecraft, you don’t want it to be hit by even a little bit of stuff traveling at these speeds.”

For those more interested in comets than football, viewing opportunities, like the dangers of the flyby, are few — but they aren’t nonexistent.

The Slooh Community Observatory, with three telescopes spread between the Canary Islands and Chile, will host webcasts at the time of the flyby, starting at 12:15 p.m. MDT Sunday, with a second webcast beginning at 6:30 p.m. MDT Sunday. The webcasts can be accessed at slooh.com.

Meanwhile, MAVEN — for which the principal investigator is Bruce Jakosky, associate director for science at CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics — and other NASA missions will be watching Siding Spring from ringside seats.

NASA lists no fewer than 16 separate assets, MAVEN included, that will be making observations before, during and immediately after the comet hurtles by. It is the largest fleet of orbiting scientific observatories ever flown to another planet, and the first time scientists have a chance to make close-up observations of a comet new to our solar system.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Charlie Brennan at 303-473-1327 or brennanc@dailycamera.com.