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Comet ISON update!

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hukadarn

hukadarn

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The situation would be similar to the comet C/1999 S4 LINEAR, the cameras in Earth does not have enough resolution to discern the fragments individually (like the cameras of SOHO and Stereo) which takes the impression of a brilliant mass especially in the tail region just behind the point where it was before the COMA.

Only Hubble could resolve the bright region like a cloud of debris


CometLinear.jpg

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SHUTTLE ATLANTIS

SHUTTLE ATLANTIS

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just a quick update from nasa

Continuing a history of surprising behavior, material from Comet ISON appeared on the other side of the sun on the evening on Nov. 28, 2013, despite not having been seen in observations during its closest approach to the sun. The question remains whether it is merely debris from the comet, or if some portion of the comet's nucleus survived, but late-night analysis from scientists with NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that there is at least a small nucleus intact.

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DaveGarland

DaveGarland

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Just warned the wife: if ISON survives then I have to break out the xmas 10x50's early to give this comet first light!!! It would be rude not to, wouldn't it?!

Entirely reasonable. You may need to open that single malt you were saving for Xmas to keep the cold air off you too ;)

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Ness

Ness

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It looks like I'll finally have clear skies in the morning. I know there's only a tiny chance of seeing something with my scope, but being the optimist I am I plan to try! Where is the best place to look for it? Is what's left of ISON thought to be near Antares?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

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astronymonkey

astronymonkey

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ISON, the troll of the century!1454617_399549703512004_2111241905_n.jpg

Ok, Im no expert but here is my take on where we are at the moment.

The comet approached the sun almost head on with both gas and dust tail behind , concentrating all of the reflective material into a single line. A the comet neared the sun the solar wind , as can be seen on the RIP slide ,  took off the tail leaving nothing more than the nuceus , but at this time it had gone very close to the sun and was not visible on the NASA feed due to its small size and no tail.

As it passed around the other side it more or less catches back up with the newly formed tail and the nucleus travels within the coma which was forming thus making it brighten quickly before the coment continued to curve to the right leaving the newly formed tail to be blown out on a curve behing the nucleus. So the tail at 9 oclock is one tail, being blown by the solar wind away from the coment , like water coming out of a moving hosepipe, and the tail at 7 o'clock is the other tail which is pointing behind the comet , away from the direction of travel.

As its now travelling away from the sun the tail isnt being left behind as in the approach but is being blown along with the solar wind, with the nucleus meaning it looks less impessive and more compact. The solar wind is around 300km/sec which is around 600,000mph which will be pretty close to the speed of the nucleus.....so the tail will only begin to appear as it moves away at 90 degrees to the solar wind.

As I said Im no expert but this is what my simple mind is making of all of this,

Cheers

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nameunknown

nameunknown

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Got home from work to find on the printer a perhaps badly written web post saying:

There are chocolate-chomping noises coming from from upstairs. I think the telescope assistant might have misunderstood "heading towards earth". Hope she's wrong, otherwise you may indeed need to open that single malt you were saving for Xmas...

P

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gpt

gpt

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Home from work and boy was i glad to see ask the scientists and pros were wrong! Surprised there hasn't been more or a response from the ESA or NASA today...

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

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AndyPandy

AndyPandy

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I wrote the s/w to monitor the CDS instrument when it went into the Solar simulator tank at Farnborough.  I was working at RAL who built CDS.  I remember I had to go to Farnborough in the middle of the night because of a hardware issue.  It was easier, quicker and therefore cheaper to modify the software than to let the air back in the tank get the instrument out, fix it, put it back in and pump all the air out again.  The tank was huge, you could get a small lorry in it. 

So I played a small part.

I don't know what you are talking about but it sounds blumming impressive!

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Planetesimal

Planetesimal

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20131128_191224_1024_0171.jpg

This image that Astronymonkey posted yesterday evening during perihelion is really wonderful - I'm certain that's Ison and the sun looks majestic and awesome next to it. On this scale Ison is a dot as big as the Earth, which is amazing considering it's only about 2 km in diameter at most. And in those blue C3 images post perihelion, bearing in mind the Sun is the size of the small white circle within the larger black occulting disc, Ison's glow has increased to almost the size of the Sun itself! How is it possible for it to have enough material to create such a glow given its tiny size?

I showed a colleague this image today at work and he was astounded. He said he'd never seen the Sun like that - he'd never realised just how beautiful a star really is. Whatever happens to this comet now, there's no doubt it's been inspiring!

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allcart

allcart

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I'm not convinced that the spark is Ison. I checked these pis like most folk did and although the spark showed up In more than one filter view, it only apeared on one frame in the sequence and in a different location on each view.

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astronymonkey

astronymonkey

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Ive gone back and looked at the original shot and although I felt this was ISON ive noticed it was only on this frame and there is a similar symmetrical mark on the same vertical axis toward the bottom.

What is odd though is that these marks a perihelion and later are where the comet was expected to be at that time although the purple 18:23 one seems too far  up for the comets placement at that time.

So Im not sure anymore ..... although as we know ISON had to be somewhere in the frame as it survived so ill leave it to the  experts at nasa to work out  :rolleyes:

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gkec

gkec

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that definately looks like a different trajectory, mit would be interestig to see what the difference is in 3 dimentions ie has it been slung more toward or away thann expected aswell?

The trajectory has been checked and as is as expected.

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mjpfc

mjpfc

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The scientists at SDO Said yesterday that it was a proton hit in the SDO camera, translated down to the filter detectors..

They usually clean them out of images, he said, but they were far too busy yesterday.

Mind you, they were so stressed yesterday They may possibly have erred ?

It was quite something yesterday evening............ has it?  hasnt it?

Flitting from Forum to Live feed and back...........They're saying its done.......he's saying its still there......

It was frenetic, dirty, clammy and just wrong but it felt so good.

Did someone say it was coming straight for us ?   I feel another 12,000,000 post-in-24hrs thread coming up.

Mick

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