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Dust trap - regions form around young stars in which the growth of future comets is possible. – What is the pension amount for scientists?

How did oceans appear on Earth? What was the Tunguska meteorite? How do scientists discover comets and how do amateurs? We talked about all this with Ukrainian astronomer Klim Ivanovich Churyumov, professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, discoverer of comets Churyumov-Gerasimenko (1969) and Churyumov-Solodovnikov (1986), director of the Kiev Planetarium.

It is towards Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko that the European Space Agency's Rosetta apparatus is now flying. Scientists hope his mission will reveal more about the past solar system.

Interviewed Natalia Demina.

– Can we say that you know everything about comets? When is the best time to look for them?

– No, of course, and I would like to know more. The best time to look for comets is in the morning and evening, when they approach perihelion, become brighter, and begin to appear against the twilight sky. And when they are in the dark night sky, many can see them. To be the first to see a new comet, you need to conduct observations in the evening in the western sky and in the morning in the eastern sky an hour or two before sunrise or after sunset. These are the so-called Everhart zones, in which amateurs previously visually discovered about 70% of all new comets.

Already in the 90s of the last century, the situation with the discovery of comets changed radically, as CCD cameras appeared on telescopes, with the help of which it became possible to discover very faint comets long before they appeared near the Sun, i.e. throughout the night, when the sky background is minimal. This immediately made itself felt in the number of comet discoveries during the year. If earlier, thanks mainly to the activity of amateurs, on average 6-7 comets were discovered, now with the help of automated sensitive CCD cameras on telescopes and the SOHO orbital station, several dozen, or even more than 200 new comets are discovered - this was the case until 1996. in which 44 comets were discovered, in 1997 - 104, in 1998 - 140, in 1999 - 135, in 2000 - 134, in 2001 -148, in 2002 - 181, in 2003 - 193, in 2004 - 221, in 2005 - 221, in 2006 -205, in 2007 - 223, in 2008 - 220, in 2009 - 227! This was the most comet discoveries in one year.

Then there was a decline - in 2010 -57, in 2011 - 49, in 2012 - 62 and in 2013 - 67 comets. Amateur contributions to discoveries during these years ranged from 1 to 6 comets. In 2012-2013, the activity of amateurs intensified, and they discovered 8 comets in 2012, and 14 comets in 2013! From 2010 to 2013, new comets were discovered for the first time by Russian and Belarusian astronomy lovers: Leonid Elenin (2 comets), Artem Novichonok (2 comets), Vitaly Nevsky (2 comets), Vladimir Gerke (1), Gennady Borisov (2), whom I I would like to sincerely congratulate you through your newspaper and wish you success in discovering new comets.

– Is the discovery of comets a matter for amateurs or professionals?

– Amateurs played a large role in the discovery of comets, although professional astronomers also discovered many comets. The "comet boom" in Europe began after Halley's Comet appeared in 1758, strictly according to the prediction made by Edmund Halley in 1682. Immediately everyone started buying telescopes, and their prices dropped.

A professional draftsman, and then a professional astronomer, a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, “comet catcher” Charles Messier (1730-1817) discovered 11 comets alone, and 1 more together with P. Mechain. And in order to make it convenient to search for comets, I compiled a catalog of 110 nebulae and star clusters. In my own way appearance they are similar to comets: they also have a blurry shell around the central condensation.

1 - March 2004: spacecraft launch;
2 - March 2005: first flyby of Earth;
3 - February 2007: flyby of Mars;
4 - second flight near the Earth;
5 - September 2008: approach to the Steins asteroid;
6 - November 2009: third flyby of the Earth;
7 - July 2010: approach to the asteroid Lutetia;
8 - July 2011: transfer of the spacecraft to sleep mode;
9 - January 2014: awakening of the spacecraft;
10 - August 2014: entry into comet orbit;
11 - November 2014: probe landing on the surface of the comet;
12 - August 2015: mission completion

Jean-Louis Pons (1761-1831), caretaker of the Marseille Observatory, who later became director of the La Marlia Observatory near the Italian city of Lucca, discovered 26 comets. He himself polished lenses and made telescopes for searching for comets.

Then new technology came, high-aperture telescopes appeared, and they began to photograph the sky. But not the entire celestial sphere, but some part. The main part of the sky is in the region of the ecliptic, where comets are usually visible, whose orbits have a low inclination. Professionals and amateurs have searched for and found many periodic comets. At one time, the Czech astronomer Antonin Mrkos (1918–1996) became famous, who discovered 13 comets in the 50-60s. Japanese Minoru Honda (1913-1990) discovered 12 comets. Then the first place in the discovery of comets (32 comets) was taken by American astronomers, the spouses Carolyn Shoemaker and Eugene Shoemaker (this is the first person whose remains are buried on the Moon. - Ed.), They had a professional aperture telescope. Shoemakers, along with David Levy, discovered the comet that crashed into Jupiter in 1994. Levi himself discovered 6 comets single-handedly and simultaneously with other observers 16 more comets, i.e. a total of 22 comets, the seventh highest total as of mid-May 2014.

Nowadays, many amateurs are observing with the help of high-aperture telescopes and CCD matrices. Some of them have already discovered from 10 to 26 comets. Among these new discoverers are Rick Hill (26 comets, the same as Pons, but with a CCD camera), Andrea Boattini (25), Alex Jeebs (23), Erik Christensen (20), William Bradfield (18) - unlike others, only visually, Gordon Garradd (17), Brian Skiff (16), Gene Mueller (15), Don Maichgaults (11 and also only visually). But the most famous is Robert H. McNaught from Australia, who has already discovered 82 comets, including 29 short-period comets. This is a record of all time. True, he discovered all his comets with a sensitive CCD camera and a fifty-centimeter Schmidt telescope.

However, even more comets are found by special telescopes or spacecraft. For example, the team of the Laboratory for the Search for Near-Earth Asteroids named after. Lincoln (LINEAR, the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research) is looking for dangerous asteroids approaching Earth. In addition to more than 200 thousand asteroids, they have already discovered 244 comets. 1877 comets were discovered by the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft, launched jointly by NASA and ESA to observe the Sun. He discovers very specific sungrazer comets that pass through the corona of the Sun. Temperatures of 2 million Kelvin in the corona are very difficult to withstand. Some burn up, while others go around the Sun and fly further, significantly losing mass.

Amateurs actively use SOHO photographs and use them to discover comets. All of them are named SOHO, and the amateur who first noticed it in the image is considered the discoverer, but the comet is not named after him.

A comet receives the name of its discoverer if an amateur finds it using a telescope. For example, Ikeya-Seki, Honda. They searched with small telescopes. American amateur astronomer Richard A. Kowalski discovered nine comets, one of them was considered a “lost” comet, discovered by Edward Pigott in 1783. There are many amateurs who have already discovered several comets (within the top ten), and they are named after the discoverers.

– Please tell us how you managed to discover the comet to which Rosetta is now flying.

– Svetlana Gerasimenko and I went to Kazakhstan as professionals; we had a special task to search for and observe comets. In 1969, we arrived, began observing comets, saw a dozen famous comets (Comet Faye, Comas Sol and others). Usually we immediately looked through the photographic plates. If they saw an interesting object, they immediately processed it, determined whether it was a comet or, perhaps, a glare - anything can happen.

One day Sveta took a photographic plate, and I made observations with another telescope. It was September 11, 1969. When she developed, she did not have enough developer. In the center where the comet was located there was a small, bright and noticeable spot. Sveta even wanted to break the record and throw it away, thinking that she had ruined it. It’s good that Professor Dmitry Aleksandrovich Rozhkovsky kept her from doing this, because even if the records have defects, they still need to be dried, washed and viewed. Before that, she and I removed two plates, the same area. Then she left, and a week later, on September 21, 1969, I shot two more photographic plates.

When we returned to Kyiv, we began processing records. The speck was suspicious, we processed it and obtained its equatorial coordinates. But this is not enough to determine the orbit of the object, if it really was a trace on the plate from a new comet. You need at least three exact positions of the comet. And we also had 4 plates that exposed the same area of ​​the sky. If it's a comet, then it should get there too. We looked at these plates and at their very edge we found 4 images of a new comet. This made us happy and inspired.

We immediately sent a message to the USA Central Bureau astronomical telegrams (Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams). A month had already passed since the discovery and there was a risk that the comet had already been discovered by another observer. But it worked out. When our telegram arrived at the Discovery Office, Professor Brian Geoffrey Marsden looked at our data, determined the orbit and immediately said that this was a new comet. This is how we became its pioneers. It turned out to be periodic with a circulation period of 6.5 years. This is rare among large number comets and good news for us. The comet will return to Earth every six and a half years!

-Where does she fly during this time?

– It flies beyond the orbit of Jupiter, it is a typical comet of the Jupiter family. It turned out to be an interesting evolution. If we calculate the evolution of the orbit, i.e. As it moved in the past, 10 years before our discovery it passed very close to Jupiter. The planet has greatly changed its orbit. The comet approached the Earth, became brighter, and thanks to this we were able to detect it. If there had been no approach to Jupiter, then it would have been spinning and spinning in the asteroid belt until now, and no one would have been able to detect it there

Now thanks modern technology comets and faint objects can be discovered both in the asteroid belt and beyond the belt. Then this was done only from photographs; we used the technology that was used in those days.

– Why do you think your comet attracted the attention of the European Space Agency? Why was the interplanetary probe sent specifically to this comet?

– It belongs to the periodic ones, to the Jupiter family. You can only send a spacecraft to a comet that has returned to the Sun more than once, and that has a proven, accurate orbit so as not to miss. It is easy to miss the mark with a new comet; its orbit cannot be accurately determined due to ignorance of the non-gravitational forces in one comet appearance. All that was needed was a short-period comet, which had already returned to Earth several times.

Our comet is such that the inclination of its plane to the ecliptic is 7 degrees. The inclination is small, so the device can easily approach it. On the other hand, when they were planning the Rosetta space probe flight, they chose another comet - Comet Wirtanen, which has a small nucleus with a diameter of 1.2 km. Our core is larger - 3 by 5 km.

The Europeans carried out calculations and prepared equipment for a soft landing on Comet Wirtanen. But on the eve of the launch of the device, problems arose with the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, the launch was disrupted, and it had a narrow window of 2 weeks. If you left 2 weeks in advance, you won’t get to the chosen comet. This is caused by the fact that both the Earth and the comet are moving. When a vehicle is launched from Earth, it moves in almost the same plane as the comet and the planet; and the meeting will take place on the same plane. Thus, the first launch of Rosetta on January 12, 2003 failed.

They began to choose another comet. There were many discussions, and the prevailing point of view was that comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko was the most convenient for a rendezvous. We were very happy because the likelihood of such a selection is very low. If you take periodic comets, there are about 550 of them, then the probability is 1/550. And if we take all the comets, then there are a trillion of them in the Solar System. The probability that ours was selected from all comets is one in a trillion. This made us very happy.

– Did they call you and tell you, or did you find out on your own?

– And we were aware all the time, we saw the discussion by correspondence. Then the commission met and decided to send the device in February 2004. There were two delayed launch attempts, and the device was finally sent towards the comet on March 2, 2004.

Since its launch, Rosetta has captured photographs of asteroids Steins (2008) and Lutetia (2010). The device then went into sleep mode. On January 20, 2014, “Rosetta” was woken up, she said hello to everyone. At the Mission Control Center, everyone clapped their hands: in the tenth year of the flight, after sleeping for 3 years, the device woke up in excellent condition.

Why is the flight so long? Because you need to get exactly close to the comet's nucleus. You can't waste a lot of fuel. It is only one and a half tons and is intended for subtle and precise correction of the orbit during the transition to an orbital flight with a radius of 25 km around the core and for landing the Philae lander on the core. Therefore, it is necessary to use other energy sources. Which? The gravitational attraction of planets, the strength of which depends on the distance to the planet. Three times the device was passed near the Earth at different distances (2005, 2007 and 2009), the Earth pushed it. And once he flew near Mars (2007).

Of the two asteroids that Rosetta photographed along the way, Steins, discovered at the Crimean Observatory in Ukraine, is especially interesting. It has a rhombic, trapezoidal shape, like a diamond. Therefore, the craters on this asteroid were named after precious stones. The largest crater is Almaz with a diameter of 2.1 km. The diameters of three more craters (Zircon, Chrysoberyl and Onyx) are more than 1 km. The rest are less than 1 km - Emerald, Malachite, Opal, Sapphire, Garnet, etc. There are others: Chalcedony, Chrysolite... But one area that does not have craters is named after the Crimean astronomer Nikolai Chernykh who discovered this asteroid. And now Rosetta is moving towards our object.

At the end of May, Rosetta will be at a distance of about 550 thousand km from the comet. And on November 11, a historic event will take place - the world's first landing of a device on a comet nucleus! It will spin around and transmit an image of a comet. A globe of the comet will be constructed to find five level landing sites.

A landing module called the PhiLae lander will land on one of these sites. This is the island on the Nile where an obelisk was found, with the help of which it was possible to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone. After the descent vehicle lands, drilling and exploration of the substance will begin.

This substance is primary, from which the Solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and the planets were formed. And comets preserved this substance in in its original form. The planets processed it, because due to gravity this substance was compressed. The sun is also made of primary matter. But thermonuclear reactions in the depths of the Sun have changed this substance beyond recognition, and there we see mainly hydrogen and helium. There are other small impurities.
But nothing has changed in comets; there, like in a refrigerator, the matter was preserved frozen. What did comets give to the Earth? They brought water to Earth, because 3-4 billion years ago there was a powerful bombardment of the planet by comets. They poured out as if from a cornucopia. And in comets, about 80% is ice. Some of it evaporated, and some of it filled the depressions on the planet, and oceans formed on Earth. The fact that comets were the source of water on Earth is confirmed by the isotopic composition of water in the nuclei of comets and water on our planet.

Comets have complex organic matter. For example, glycine is an amino acid. And without her, none Living being doesn't work. It remains to find the amino acids from which DNA is formed - adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T) - and from which the helices of our DNA molecules are composed. This is a spiral, i.e. periodic structure, and when it divides, then any part of this spiral is reproduced, and it is immortal as long as there is water, oxygen, and heat on Earth. This is how life began on Earth. It is difficult to say how this happened, the probability is very small, but, nevertheless, it happened. And cometary matter became the source of life on Earth.

– How many such comets does it take for oceans to appear?

– Trillions of comets.

– Why did they fall to Earth before, but not now?

- Almost everything is already exhausted. Bodies that flew past the Earth were attracted to it like a vacuum cleaner. But there is still a lot of debris floating around in space.

– How did you decide to become an astronomer in the first place? You were born in 1937. In 1953, when Stalin died, you were 16 years old. What influenced your choice?

– At first I studied at a technical school, graduated with honors, then entered Kiev University. I entered and passed exams at the Faculty of Physics. The Faculty of Physics had a Department of Astronomy. At first I wanted to go to theoretical physics, but there were few places there. Therefore, I was delegated to the Department of Optics. Optics is a good science, but I didn’t like that I was sent there against my wishes. Then we were told that there were vacancies in the astronomy department. "Come on guys." Well, my friend and I went, they took us because we studied well. We studied astronomy and gradually got involved. Then they defended their candidate's thesis and then their doctorate.

– How did you become interested in comets?

– My topic was precisely the physics of comets. My supervisor is the famous cometologist S.K. All Saints. I entered graduate school with him, he assigned me a topic. I began to study, observe, discovered a comet, and more than one. The second one was opened in 1986.

– Why is the second one interesting?

– It is long-period, its orbital period is 4 thousand years. When it moved away, it still had a hot core in Mars' orbit. It's amazing what her inner source is? Perhaps some radioactive elements were decaying in the depths of its core.

-Where is she flying to?

– She flew beyond the boundaries of the solar system. Will return in 4 thousand years.

“Our descendants will see it.”

– Descendants will undoubtedly see it and figure out why it was warm for a long, long time, judging by its infrared radiation.

-What do you think about Tunguska meteorite?

– I think it was the nucleus of a comet. It flew into the atmosphere and an explosion occurred. It was a loose body. The Earth's atmosphere has low density, but has strong resistance, especially to loose bodies. As a result, a powerful shock wave arose, the snowball heated up and exploded, crumbling, so not a single piece was found. Three more white nights in the southern latitudes - that’s three days the Earth passed through the comet’s dusty tail. So it was clearly a comet, no need to even think about it.

– How would you comment on the situation with the Crimean Observatory? There is a complex conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and what should we do with the observatory now?

– Under Soviet rule, it was all one country. We conducted observations in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and observed a lot in the Caucasus. It's difficult to go there now. It's sad that Russia insults Ukraine so much. Scientists are not to blame, they have nothing to do with it. We will cooperate. There may be difficulties while traveling.

– Will Ukrainian scientists go to the Crimean Observatory or not?

- Of course yes. Sooner or later everything will return to normal. The whole world opposed this; these are violations of international norms and agreements. Putin imagines that he is a god and a king. Why does Russia need arid Crimea if there is a huge amount of uninhabited land in Russia? I traveled around central Russia, there were abandoned villages, empty houses. These are huge territories, hundreds and thousands of villages. We need to develop our country - make it prosperous and rich. We must be friends and cooperate.

– What is the current situation with Ukrainian astronomy and astrophysics? Is there a surge in amateur astronomy in the country? I know there is a great demand for buying telescopes.

- They buy, they are interested. They write to me a lot, telling me what they observe. I try to answer everyone.

– Are there any discoverers of comets living in Ukraine?

– For all time, 13 comets have been discovered in Ukraine. And now in Crimea, amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov, a former traffic police officer who discovered two comets and an asteroid dangerous to the Earth, is conducting observations; he is out of work, but maybe they will give him a job now, given his wonderful discoveries.

– What is happening to academic astronomy? How would you describe the situation?

– Ukraine is an astronomical country. When the Union collapsed, Ukraine received 10 observatories, which is a lot. Ukraine continues to set a high standard in the world; we have many excellent results, including the discovery of comets and asteroids. Especially asteroids. More than 1,200 minor planets were found at the Crimean Observatory. Professors Boris Kashcheev and Yuri Voloshchuk work in Kharkov, who dedicated their lives to observations of night and daylight meteor showers by radar method. So they identified 230 thousand orbits and more than 4 thousand new meteor showers and associations. This is a unique base, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world. In the field of small bodies, which include comets, asteroids and meteoric matter, we have amazing results in discoveries. Our solar workers and planets are famous for their work. We are strong in extragalactic astronomy and cosmology.

– What about financing?

- Funding is bad. The budget is constantly being cut. Last year they reduced it by 20%. I had to fire my employees. First of all, pensioners. But it’s difficult to survive on retirement, especially in the context of the rapid decline of the hryvnia, so the laid-off people write slanderous claims, although the bar for their scientific results is actually low.

– What is the size of the pension for scientists?

– The scientific pension is not bad. 80% of your salary is pretty decent. My pension is 6200 hryvnia. Previously it was 750 dollars, but now the rate has dropped sharply, now it is less than 500 dollars. But I’m still a professor, doctor of physics and mathematics. Sciences, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences, and thanks to this I somehow stay afloat.

But my wife worked for 40 years as a physics teacher in universities, with a heavy throat load and worked on her feet all the time, which is why she developed acute thrombophlebitis, which she could hardly bear. severe pain while giving lectures. For such hard labour After 40 years, she now receives a pension of just over $100. Isn't this slave labor for pennies?

– Is it possible to live on that kind of money?

- Of course, it’s hard. Moreover, my wife had a stroke and she needs to be treated. I work, thanks to this we still survive. But I don’t work full time, but at 8/10ths rate.

– I was told that you ran a popular science magazine, and then stopped.

– Because there is no one to finance it. The magazine needed an editor, I worked for free. We need a typesetter, we need a layout designer. I know how to layout, but I don’t have time, I have enough work of my own. The magazine was very popular and much loved. I regret that it is not published now. But we publish it sometimes, and for the time being we will publish it in in electronic format, so I invite all astronomy lovers to send in their astronomical observations; we will publish them on the Internet.

– Can it be compared with the magazine “Universe, Space, Time”? What were the differences?

– We differ in that we published more articles aimed at astronomy enthusiasts. And Sergei Gordienko in his magazine popularizes everything, not only astronomy, but also earth sciences, strongly promotes aviation, space technology. He has a very good popular magazine, where famous astronomers and other scientists are published.

– Was your magazine published in Russian?

- In Ukrainian.

– You are the director of the Kyiv Planetarium. Are children and young people interested in it?

– We have subscriptions for schoolchildren from grades 1 to 11. Previously, tickets were cheaper. 200 Kyiv schools regularly took out subscriptions and brought their schoolchildren to our lectures. There was great interest, educational work was carried out on high level. But even now interest in the planetarium does not dry up, although the number of listeners is Lately decreased due to increased prices for tickets and season tickets and the fall of the hryvnia.

– How do you feel about full-dome programs for planetariums?

- This is a show. You can watch it once or twice, and that’s it. And knowledge comes from lectures, only there you can ask a question and get an answer. Lectures are given by professionals. And there are a lot of mistakes in the films, but it’s educational to watch, which isn’t a bad thing either. In my opinion, planetariums should combine fulldome programs and constantly updated astronomy lectures. Only in this way will it be possible to conduct active educational activities and bring the light of new scientific knowledge to all people and especially to the younger generation.

– Director of the Armed Forces Planetarium in Moscow Larisa Aleksandrovna Panina (you probably know her) says that without oral live lectures the planetarium dies. You'll probably agree with her.

– Now everyone is switching to ready-made fulldome films. But these are no longer planetariums, these are cinemas. The unique atmosphere is lost. These can be called planetariums conditionally. Only a combination of new original planetarium programs with professional astronomer lecturers, which the Kiev Planetarium now has, and with the display of the most interesting cosmic phenomena and discoveries in the Universe to the entire 24th dome of our planetarium can highly raise the role of the planetarium as the most effective educational institution in the country.

– Are there many unknowns left about comets?

- Yes. The main thing is to find out the true chemical, elemental, organic and isotopic composition of the cometary substance... We see fragments of complex molecules in the spectra, i.e. molecules with two, three or more atoms or only individual atoms. If a complex molecule falls apart, it is not always possible to completely restore the original parent molecule from its fragments, nor is it always possible to decipher the true composition of the cometary substance. Many plasma structures in the tails do not yet have adequate physical models, the issue of ionization of atoms and molecules in comets has not been resolved, and much more. These are the fundamental unsolved problems for future astronomers and comet researchers.

Photos from the personal archive of K.I. Churyumov, Rosetta flight diagram from www.wikipedia.ru

With the arrival of the long-awaited summer, we all have the opportunity to enjoy not only warm days and romantic evenings, each of us can expect more than one encounter with annoying insects - mosquitoes. Of course, today we have enough tools in our arsenal to allow us to effective fight with a small bloodsucker, what an electric, homemade or mechanical mosquito trap is is what we will discuss in this material.

Of course, everything known remedies protection is indispensable in certain circumstances: on a picnic you cannot do without a special spray or ointment. But the trouble is that the protection applied to the skin can cause allergic reactions. Fumigators can be used in the bedroom, but special insert plates last a limited time, and replenishment requires material costs. It is much easier to build a special trap for harmful insects, you can even do it with your own hands - then annoying mosquitoes will not bother you with their annoying squeaks and unpleasant bites.

Video “Ultraviolet traps”

From the video you will learn the principle of operation of mosquito traps.

Velcro

The old “old-fashioned” way to combat unwanted insects indoors is with ordinary adhesive tape. Such a trap for annoying mosquitoes, placed near the switched on lamp, will help clear the room of insects.
Of course, this product works much more effectively with larger representatives of insects, but mosquitoes will not be able to avoid the placed nets. The effectiveness of the method is determined by the fact that, even slightly touching the sticky surface of the tape, the mosquito will no longer be able to free itself.

Electrical traps

Electronic modern mosquito traps work on the principle of emitters: spreading heat or carbon dioxide, they attract insects, giving them the illusion of the presence of a person or mammal. Such funds are divided into several types:


Another product that has recently appeared on the domestic market is ultrasonic repeller insects This small device, resembling a keychain, which, by creating certain ultrasonic vibrations, can repel insects.

And even though the price of such a device is somewhat higher in comparison with traditional methods, once you purchase it, you will for a long time Protect yourself from annoying insects without putting yourself at risk of developing allergic reactions. In addition, the action of the device is universal: during the day it can effectively fight wasps or flies, and in the evening it can build an insurmountable barrier around you for mosquitoes.

Baits with insecticides

Represent enough effective remedy- these are small containers containing a special filler that can not only attract, but also destroy insects. The disadvantage of this method of control is obvious: each container is disposable: as soon as the dead insects completely fill it, it will end its service cycle.

Mechanical traps

This DIY mosquito trap, made in the form of a special container, is not only one of the most common, but also, of course, the most inventive method of fighting insects.


Mosquitoes attracted by a special bait, once inside the container, can no longer get out. Even an ordinary jar filled with sweet syrup can serve as an improvised means of control: once mosquitoes get inside the container and wet their wings, they inevitably die.

Homemade traps

To make your own trap, you will need a regular plastic bottle. Her neck is cut off, leaving a third part from total length containers, and insert the reverse end into the rest of the bottle. The container is ready! All you have to do is fill it with the bait mixture, and your trap will start working. To prevent insects from resisting your “treat,” prepare it from a mixture of sugar, water and regular yeast: the fermentation process that has begun will inevitably begin to release carbon dioxide, attracting mosquitoes from all over the area. Then everything is simple: an insect, stuck in a sticky liquid, will never find its way back out of the container.

You can organize a less complicated way of catching mosquitoes - make sticky tape. For this you will need thick paper, cut into long strips, and a special sticky mixture made from rosin, turpentine, castor oil and sugar.

The ingredients must be prepared in a water bath until they become viscous, then apply the resulting composition onto paper, and secure the strips under the ceiling with threads, choosing a place that will be of interest to insects - near lighting fixture or any element that emits heat.

To protect your life from annoying insects in the summer months, it is not at all necessary to spend a lot of money on purchasing numerous special products, fumigators, sprays and other new inventions in this area. It’s enough just to go back to the roots and remember how our parents solved this problem; we are sure that you will learn many remedies that are not only effective, but also safe for the health of your family members.

Today we will talk about another cool and very popular rotating spoon - Mepps Comet . Honestly, my acquaintance with Mepps turntables in general, it happened just with this bait, a small spinner Mepps Comet No. 1 Golden color with red dots. The catchability of this bait exceeded all my expectations and my confidence in the lures of the French company began to grow like a snowball - along with the presence of these lures in my arsenal.

Mepps Comet turntables(full name - Mepps Comet Decore) have a petal of medium width, something intermediate between and. In this regard, this spinner has the glory of a universal bait. Mepps Comet can be successfully used both in standing reservoirs and in currents, when catching a very wide range of different predatory and not very fish

Thanks to the average width of the petal, the pinwheels Mepps Comet rotate with an angle of deflection of the petal from the axis of the spinner by 45 degrees. Accordingly, Comet is less stubborn than Aglia, but more stubborn than Long.

Mepps Comet spinner colors There are only Silver and Gold colors with metal, as well as black ones - BlackFury, which are often separated into a separate category, although their petal shape is the same Comet...

Red or blue dots are painted on the metal surface.

Such a bright, variegated color attracts fish very well - fact!

Numbering of Mepps “Comet” turntables: No. 00; №0; No. 1; No. 2; No. 3; No. 4; No. 5.

Mepps Comet Decor turntables No. 00 and No. 0. Excellent ultralight baits that mow down not only bass and pike, but also a variety of whitefish and peaceful fish, including crucian carp...

Spinner Mepps Comet Decor No. 1. My favorite spinner for fishing in spring and early summer on rivers and river bays. Of course, by the end of summer and autumn it is wiser to use larger turntables, but in the spring, until July, a single Comet works perfectly! This summer I caught pike, perch, chub, asp, rudd, white bream, roach, and silver bream on Comet No. 1. Solid for a spinning bait! Both Gold and Silver work well in the red dot. I used the comet mainly on grassy river shallows; in areas with slow flows, near niches in steep river banks; on shallows, edges of weed bays and lakes. Especially the perch just goes crazy about this spinner!

Rotating Mepps spinner Comet Decor №2. Universal spinner. It successfully catches medium and large perch, large chub, and pike is already steadily starting to be caught. Working depths up to 2-2.5m. It doesn't fly well. In a word, a good, catchy spinner!

Spinner Mepps Comet Decore No. 3. Lure for large perch. Pike also react well, even trophy specimens.

Spinner Mepps Comet Decor No. 4. A fairly large bait for catching pike on lakes and other types of bodies of water with standing water.

Mepps Comet Decor №5. A large spoon - apparently as inconvenient as the Aglia of the same number... I have never used this horror...

I usually apply a small upgrade to Mepps Comet() - I do . And it attracts fish, like better and less twisting of the line.

Today there are many in various ways avoid encounters with mosquitoes. However, often these are products that either contain chemical components, the use of which naturally affects humans, or are completely safe, but ineffective. A homemade mosquito trap is not only safe, but also effective method get rid of these annoying insects.

We'll open it for you little secret: the thing is that we are bitten only by pregnant female mosquitoes who need nutrition in the form of human blood to breed. When we apply various insect repellent creams to ourselves or spray ourselves and clothes special aerosols, the smell of a male begins to emanate from us, who has a need to fertilize the female. But since she is already pregnant, the female tries to avoid contact with males, so mosquitoes do not bite us after applying various products.

And since we cannot constantly use creams and aerosols - after all, they contain toxic substances that affect the condition of the skin - manufacturers offer us various products that can be used at home, in the country and in nature. These include various spirals, aerosols that need to be sprayed into the room, and various devices that work through the network.

Yes, they really work, but by using them, we expose our body to toxic substances. chemical substances which they release into the air. Therefore, a safer way to protect yourself and your loved ones from mosquitoes than a DIY trap has not yet been invented.

So, how to make an insect trap yourself and what materials will be needed for this?

A Chinese mosquito trap is made from an ordinary plastic bottle and products that can be found in any kitchen

Chinese trap

Anyone can make a Chinese trap with their own hands. To do this you will need:

  • regular sparkling water bottle 1.5 l or 2 l;
  • sharp scissors or knife;
  • 1 glass of hot water;
  • sugar, preferably brown – 50 g;
  • dry yeast – 1 g;
  • black paper or cardboard.

So, homemade trap is made as follows. First you need to cut the bottle in half. You need to pour into its lower part hot water and add sugar. Mix everything thoroughly and leave to cool. When the water has cooled to about 40 ° C, you can add yeast, but there is no need to stir it.

Next take top part bottle and insert it into the bottom with the neck down. Then take paper or cardboard and wrap the prepared trap. For these purposes, you can use glue or regular thread. The main thing is that there are no gaps in the bottle.

The prepared trap should be placed in a dark place. It must not be hit directly Sun rays, otherwise it will deteriorate and the trap will be of no use. After two weeks, you can remove the paper and check how many mosquitoes you have caught.


Duct tape is a simple but effective way to get rid of annoying bloodsuckers.

Adhesive tape

Duct tape is an excellent mosquito killer. It is not at all necessary to buy it in stores, duct tape You can prepare it yourself, using improvised means.

First, you need to prepare a cardboard sleeve, onto which the paper treated with adhesive mass will then be attached. To do this, you need to attach a thread to the sleeve, which will serve as a fastener. Then we attach the paper to the resulting cartridge using any of available ways. And then you can make an adhesive mass.

It can be prepared from various ingredients. All ingredients must be melted in a water bath and mixed thoroughly. You can use the following ingredients:

  • 200 g of rosin, 100 g of castor oil, 50 g of turpentine and 50 g of sugar syrup;
  • 300 g pine resin, 10 g wax, 150 g linseed oil and 50 g of honey;
  • 40 g glycerin, 100 g raw honey, 400 g rosin, 200 g vaseline oil.

An adhesive mass is prepared from these ingredients, which is then applied to paper. A do-it-yourself trap is placed by the window, near entrance doors or in any other place.

In these simple ways you can make your own trap for annoying insects.


Electronic traps for insects, using a special lamp, they create a zone of carbon dioxide concentration, which attracts mosquitoes

Electronic trap

There is one more safe way To catch these bloodsuckers in your apartment is an electric mosquito trap. You can buy it ready-made, or you can make it yourself. However, to make it, you must have at least basic knowledge of physics.

This trap is a kind of lamp with a special bottom, which is pulled out and periodically cleaned of mosquito corpses. There is a built-in lamp with special technology, which allows the production of carbon dioxide. But it is precisely this that is the very bait for insects. This same carbon dioxide imitates human breathing, thanks to which the mosquito moves towards him to taste blood. As soon as a mosquito flies up to the lamp, it is sucked inside by a fan, similar to how a vacuum cleaner works. After which - after 8 hours - the insect dies.

This is the principle of operation of an electric trap. And to make it yourself, you need to find special scheme and use it to assemble a device that will protect you and your family from small bloodsuckers.

The situation is similar with birth. celestial bodies. There are a number of theories regarding the birth of planets. There are also assumptions for asteroids and comets, and all of them, of course, have as their central point the attraction of particles of the protoplanetary disk to each other. After a star emerges, there are only tiny particles of dust in its accretion disk, and they have a long way to go to large stones, planetesimals, planets. This process remains a mystery, the main part of which the high-altitude interferometer helped to solve.

Computer simulations show that dust particles in the star's surroundings can stick together during collisions. However, a particle enlarged in this way, colliding with its own kind at enormous speed, is destroyed. The process stops long before reaching the size of asteroids. If for some reason the particle avoided dangerous collisions or survived them, another danger awaits it. Having increased in size, it begins to experience greater resistance when moving through the protoplanetary disk. Its orbit decreases and it eventually falls into the star. It turns out that there must be places in the disk where dust particles have a chance to grow to large sizes, after which they become harmless typical problems smaller brothers. The lifespan of such a dust trap should be hundreds of thousands of years. This is how long it takes for a large dust particle to “grow up”. After the trap ceases to exist, the particles that were in it continue to move in close orbits and decay very slowly, which favors further growth.

Images from ALMA (green - millimeter wave, 450 nm) and the Very Large Telescope (orange - infrared, 18 nm) (eso.org)

Models of such a process were proposed a long time ago, and their observational confirmation was received only a few months ago. Luck was with Ninke van der Marel, an employee of the Leiden Observatory. Of course, it was not the equipment of the ancient observatory that was used. The ALMA interferometer, recently put into operation, made it possible to observe the protoplanetary disk around the star Oph-IRS 48. The distance to the star is about 400 light years. The observations were made before the interferometer was officially launched using less than half of its constituent radio telescopes. The work was carried out in the range of 0.4–0.5 millimeters (in this range the interferometer so far has the best resolution). Previous observations of this star using the Very Large Telescope showed that dust in the disk collects in disk-shaped structures, and the first observations using a radio telescope showed that very similar holes can be seen in the gas disk, which were initially attributed to those already born in the disk planets, large asteroids or even a companion star.

“At first, the structures found in the dust cloud images came as a surprise,” says Marel. “Instead of the ring we expected to see, what appeared before us was the exact shape of a cashew nut. We had to spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that this structure was real, and the high spatial resolution and clarity of the ALMA image left no shadow of doubt. Then we quickly realized what this discovery meant.” The discovered structure is the very area where large dust particles are trapped, but protected from destruction and can continue to grow. This is an ideal dust trap from a theoretical point of view. “Apparently, what appears before our eyes is a factory for the production of comets. The conditions inside the trap are just ideal for dust to grow from tiny millimeter-sized particles to full-fledged nuclei of future comets. The formation of a full-fledged planet at such a distance from the star seems unlikely. Soon, however, the ALMA interferometer will be able to observe dust traps closer to the star, and exactly the same mechanisms should be at work there. All that remains is to wait for the discovery of the cradles of the planets in the dust.”

Dust traps form when dust particles enter areas of high pressure. Modeling showed that such areas of high pressure can be born when gas moves at the edge of an area practically devoid of it - just the same one that was discovered in the early stages of observation. “Combining modeling and observation work with a high-precision interferometer makes the work unique,” ​​says Cornelis Dulemo, a researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Heidelberg, who is responsible for the theoretical part of the work. – Just at the time of obtaining observational data, we were working on models that predicted the birth of such structures. Amazing coincidence!

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