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Brightest Comet in Decades to Pass Earth Later This Month

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Y

Yka

Member
Naked eye map - Comet ISON location in mid-November - 30 minutes before sunrise, looking southeast.

comet_ison_mid_november_zps8b73caf4.jpg
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comet_ison_1_zpsb803a949.jpg
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T

teruterubozu

Member
Got up early this morning at 4:45 am to check out Ison with my 10" Dobsonian telescope. Very nice. I couldn't see it with my naked eye, but saw it faintly with binoculars. It's beautiful through the scope - cloudy blueish green oval fuzzball with slight hint of tail. I could imagine it burning up as the sky became brighter with the rising sun. I had maybe a good 25 minutes between Ison coming over the horizon and the dawn getting too blue to see anything. I tried to take a photo with my shitty camera and a scope lens attachment but it was just an indiscriminate haze. The moon is still pretty full too. My neighbor was walking his dog and he came over to look. Anybody with a telescope or nice binos, I highly recommend checking it out - it's right under Spica right now. By Thanksgiving it will be bending around the sun so that'll be it. If it survives the bend around we may get some nice looks going into Christmas time. Overall I would say it's not the bright comet astronomers were expecting, but it is beautiful in color.
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
cool I'll definitely look out for this. I was actually surprised the other night that I could see the stars in SF. I wonder if I'll be able to see it while in the city
 
Karak

Karak

Member
teruterubozu said:
Got up early this morning at 4:45 am to check out Ison with my 10" Dobsonian telescope. Very nice. I couldn't see it with my naked eye, but saw it faintly with binoculars. It's beautiful through the scope - cloudy blueish green oval fuzzball with slight hint of tail. I could imagine it burning up as the sky became brighter with the rising sun. I had maybe a good 25 minutes between Ison coming over the horizon and the dawn getting too blue to see anything. I tried to take a photo with my shitty camera and a scope lens attachment but it was just an indiscriminate haze. The moon is still pretty full too. My neighbor was walking his dog and he came over to look. Anybody with a telescope or nice binos, I highly recommend checking it out - it's right under Spica right now. By Thanksgiving it will be bending around the sun so that'll be it. If it survives the bend around we may get some nice looks going into Christmas time. Overall I would say it's not the bright comet astronomers were expecting, but it is beautiful in color.
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How nice of binoculars do you need?
 
P

Partial Gamification

Banned
Rocket Scientist said:
Where is it?
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From NA, its in Virgo and visible before dawn. Here's NASA's 'ISON toolkit' mostly info and links. Just google your location with 'view ISON' and you can find interactive starmaps. There should be an app for finding it in the sky too, I haven't looked.
One of our primary functions as coordinators of the Comet ISON Observing Campaign is to encourage and foster data sharing and discussion regarding comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). This brief blog post is to do just that.

There is some discussion over a report that has been made in which the authors describe “ coma wings [that] suggest the presence of two or more sub-nuclei” in Laplacian-filtered comet ISON images. This is a report that has been made by some respected scientists, and thus the CIOC team are definitely taking the report seriously. Indeed, as we have commented, comet ISON’s recent dramatic outburst could absolutely be the result of fragmentation of its nucleus. However, it could equally likely be the result of the expect increase in activity as it continues to approach the Sun. Both of these are possibilities that we have outlined out on this site.

We encourage more observations and analysis, but do urge caution with this latest report. The “wings” that the authors describe certainly could be the result of fragmentation, as so-called arclets are indeed correlated with fragmentation events. However, other possibilities exist:

1. Their appearance is remarkably symmetrical, which leads us to be a little more skeptical that they could be the result of a fragmentation. Fragmentation of cometary nuclei is typically an asymmetrical event, often with fragments trailing in the comet's tail, as was the case with 73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann and C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake), for example.
2. Prior to this outburst, several so-called “jets” had been reported in the area of activity that seems to be the source of these wings and thus it is possible that we are seeing enhanced dust emission due to jets in ISON’s nucleus.
3. We could simply be seeing solar wind ion tail structures, perhaps after some solar wind interaction event, for example with a coronal mass ejection or a co-rotating interaction region, or some other solar wind density enhancement. Indeed, spacecraft observations certainly indicate such interactions to have happened (this will be the source of a bog post later this week), but whether or not that interaction caused this new feature is still unknown.
[...]
source
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THE:MILKMAN

THE:MILKMAN

Member
Just been reading up on this comet after watching the BBC Horizon special.

It's the stats of these things that blow my mind. Apparently, it will reach 845,000 MPH/235 miles a second when it slingshots around the Sun in three days.

Damn!
 
T

Tuvoc

Member
THE:MILKMAN said:
Just been reading up on this comet after watching the BBC Horizon special.

It's the stats of these things that blow my mind. Apparently, it will reach 845,000 MPH/235 miles a second when it slingshots around the Sun in three days.

Damn!
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I know that with science they can pretty much know which direction the comet will go, but what are the chances of it shifting and coming towards us and not past us?
 
Z

zyxwvu4321

Member
Tuvoc said:
I know that with science they can pretty much know which direction the comet will go, but what are the chances of it shifting and coming towards us and not past us?
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0% chance unless some extremely massive object materializes in the solar system to tug on it. In which case we'd have much bigger problems than the comet.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
zyxwvu4321 said:
0% chance unless some extremely massive object materializes in the solar system to tug on it. In which case we'd have much bigger problems than the comet.
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But exactly how fucked up would earth be if it hit us going that speed?
 
S

sinxtanx

Member
THE:MILKMAN said:
Just been reading up on this comet after watching the BBC Horizon special.

It's the stats of these things that blow my mind. Apparently, it will reach 845,000 MPH/235 miles a second when it slingshots around the Sun in three days.

Damn!
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only a thousandth of the speed of light :p
 
P

pestul

Member
http://earthsky.org/space/big-sun-diving-comet-ison-might-be-spectacular-in-2013


NOVEMBER 25, 2013. There has talk for some days about whether Comet ISON has fragmented. The experts at NASA were saying no, but this morning (November 25) Karl Battams (@sungrazingcomets on Twitter) – one of the great communicators at NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign website – is saying that something is happening to the comet. There are signs it may be fragmenting.
There’s evidence that ISON’s nucleus might not be holding up well (by which I mean falling apart!) It was always a possibility…we’ll see!
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Well that would suck..
 
G

graywords

Member
ISON is now visible in SOHO's C3 camera, and soon to be visible in C2. The SOHO site seems to be getting hammered. There are very recent concerns of fragmentation, but from the C3 shots, we know she's still kicking for now.

Hoping for the best!
 
T

teruterubozu

Member
graywords said:
ISON is now visible in SOHO's C3 camera, and soon to be visible in C2. The SOHO site seems to be getting hammered. There are very recent concerns of fragmentation, but from the C3 shots, we know she's still kicking for now.

Hoping for the best!
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Wow, very cool. It's supposed bend around during Thanksgiving, then hopefully we'll be able to see it throughout the night (no more early mornings!) around mid-December. That's if the comet holds, of course.

Here's a really crappy shaky image of Ison I took last week - handheld camera right up against my telescope eyepiece. I was too cold to set up the proper camera attachment. You can still see the amazingly beautiful blue-green glow though. I will be more prepared next time - and hopefully there will be a massive tail too.

sWIwsKt.jpg
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G

graywords

Member
ISON has come into view of camera C2 at the SOHO site mentioned above. Pretty soon, it should come into some very colorful views from the SDO that will be displayed here:

Link

Nice pic, teruterubozu! It sure seems difficult to get good astrophotos without some specialized equipment. I tried to take some photos of the so-called "super moon" the last couple of times it was in the news, but all of them were downright terrible.
 
J

Jasup

Member
Cloudy weather is the bane of my existence. I've been waiting for this comet for months and I know it's up there, but I just can't get a glimpse.
 
G

graywords

Member
Jasup said:
Cloudy weather is the bane of my existence. I've been waiting for this comet for months and I know it's up there, but I just can't get a glimpse.
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It's far too close to the Sun to be able to view well or safely right now. If it survives the sun grazing, our best bet for viewing will be just before dawn on Dec 1, then every morning after that until it gets too dim for us to see.

I remember being very excited for Halley's comet when I was a kid in the 80s — then it turned out to pretty much be a dud. Not good viewing from my location, and it wasn't a very good showing overall, either. Maybe it will perform better on its next pass, but I'll only get to see it if I make it to 80 with decent eyesight.

Let's hope ISON makes up for all that. :)
 
G

graywords

Member
The current scientific consensus is that there is no consensus yet on what has happened with ISON. They're pretty sure the nucleus was destroyed or broken up by the Sun's gravity, but now the comet (or what's left of it) is showing a strange brightening trend as it comes back around the Sun.

SOHO image:
SOHO_ISON_2013-11-29_0018.jpg


Not sure if it means there's any hope for a show in the coming days, as it likely won't brighten THAT much, but it's interesting, to say the least. We'll find out over the next hours and days.
 
B

B.K.

Member
It's disappointing that it didn't make it. Especially after they've spent the past year hyping it up so much.
 
T

Talamius

Member
Latest update is that a fragment possibly survived.

Comet ISON ‏@ISONUpdates 3m
@amizere It now appears that a fragment of the comet has survived perihelion. Not sure of the size at this time.
 
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