Comet Ison.....latest

[loveoneanother]

I was catching up on the news about Comet Ison last-night (Thursday October 17th) and came across the latest release from the Hubble team who are observing the comet.

(I can't see anything about it posted on any of the other 'Ison' threads but if any of the Avalon admin. team or moderators think it belongs on one of the other Ison threads please feel free to move it.)

The following extract that i have highlighted in bold is taken from the Hubble Blog page and i've also added the accompanying video from the "Hubble Hangout' team in which the latest picture of Comet Ison and other related issues are discussed (the 'comments' section of the video is also interesting too :) ).

(This is my first ever 'Comet' observation so please excuse the over-enthusiasm.....i'm a comet virgin if you will and think it's all very exciting !)

The photographic proof is in: Reports of Comet ISON’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Contrary to some pessimistic predictions, new Hubble data show the comet still trucking along as it falls inward of Mars and ever closer toward the Sun.

This new image, recorded by Hubble on October 9, combines long exposures taken through blue and red filters. Over 29 minutes, Hubble switched back and forth between these filters as it tracked Comet ISON across the sky.

What little color ISON has is due to differences between a comet’s coma and its tail. The tail, comprised of dust particles torn away from the comet by the gentle pressure of sunlight, appears redder because dust grains reflect redder light. The coma, by contrast, is bluer. It doesn’t contain much dust, just gas sublimating from the comet’s surface.

The comet’s nucleus, estimated at less than 2 kilometers in diameter, is tiny even through Hubble’s eagle eyes. A single pixel in this image spans 55 km of comet, making the nucleus un-resolvable at this separation (about twice the Earth-Sun distance). Still, careful study of this image suggests the nucleus is almost certainly still intact — the coma spreads out evenly from a single point, which we wouldn’t see if ISON were falling to pieces.

In fact, the symmetry of ISON’s coma suggests that the comet’s entire Sun-facing surface is feeding the coma — no jets of gas have been spotted in this image. Without a jet to spin it around (see: WALL-E & Gravity, “fire extinguisher”) ISON likely isn’t rotating much. This suggests an exciting potential future: Perhaps there’s a “dark” side of ISON, which won’t have ever seen the light of day until the comet goes around the Sun. If such pristine material still exists, ISON may become more active than we currently expect.

One mystery remains. How has ISON — humble, patient, surprisingly average Comet ISON — sparked predictions that run the gamut from “bright as the full moon” to “disintegrating as we speak”? Simply put, ISON peaked early. When it was first discovered, way out past Jupiter, ISON was really bright.

Extrapolated, those first data points made ISON look like it would shine even more as it got closer — and when it didn’t, the coverage seesawed back toward calling ISON a total bust.

According the University of Maryland’s Mike A’Hearn, that’s the curse of “dynamically new” comets, including the infamous Kohoutek. In the first four billion years of its life, ISON never once strayed into the protective umbrella of the solar wind. Without that protection, the comet’s surface was bombarded by galactic cosmic rays: high-energy particles from exotic places like the rims of black holes. That irradiated surface became fragile, volatile — only a little heat from the Sun was enough to sublimate a huge amount of gas, causing ISON’s brightness to spike early on. This is just one interpretation — Karen Meech from the University of Hawaii argues that an outburst of carbon monoxide better explains that early brightness — but the consequences still stand. ISON, like a burnt-out former child actor, has been unfairly judged by the benchmark of its own prodigious standard.

So here we see a dichromatic ISON, still in one piece, still en route to the Sun. We hope it survives its brush with destiny, heat, and gravity — at least long enough to light up our pre-dawn skies this December. What more can we ask of it?

Join us at 4 p.m. EDT on Thursday, October 17, for a live Hangout with Hubble comet scientists to discuss the new image and latest research findings about ISON.

http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/comet_ison/


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[Lifebringer]

Thank you so much. Valuable input on the language of scientist on the this event.

My book needs more ends tied, and everything that's happening/revealed, is a help.

Sometimes my educational level although a college graduate, doesn't exceed to the scientific vocabulary and Space.com, NASA, and others are a big help. I can't translate some of the other countries language and am just using pictures in the videos which take longer than a read.

[Lifebringer]

18:20-22 shows a planet next to the comet clearly reflective off the comet's light on the opposite side facing away from the sun. So here it comes peeps. There's supposed to be 7 orbiting planets around the dwarf, and I think we may have seen the first one as it goes around and is present in the comet's light that is in the lead.

[conk]

http://worldufophotos.org/site/#/gallery/new-ufo-gallery-10/10-4-13-comet-ison-and-ufo-following/

[ghostrider]

I love the path of these things , far out in the cosmos , it could go anywhere , but it heads straight for our sun , then is supposed to make a loop around and head straight back out ... completely different than planets which orbit in an oval path ... ya know , what are the odds of this ??? our nearby planets stay in orbit around the sun but this tiny thing somehow is able to overcome the entire gravity of the Sun and pull away and head back out from whence it came ...

[KiwiElf]

I think they call it the "slingshot effect" ;)

[loveoneanother]

Help.....i'm feeling 'astronomically' challenged :help:

I wonder if one of my fellow Avalonians can assist me in my understanding of some of the latest data related to Comet Ison ?

I've been trying to take the advice given by Mr.Ryan on another thread to learn some basic astronomy, which i've been attempting to do but unfortunately (and inevitably) i've got myself a little bit confused :confused:

My current area of confusion is around something called Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance or MOID. According to the latest Comet Ison data released by JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) here.....

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2012%20S1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

.....it states in the Orbit Determination Parameters section that at the solution date (date of orbit determination) on 2013-Oct-15 11:12:07 the EARTH MOID (Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance) was .0231487 AU.

I didn't really know what that AU figure means in terms of distance so i used an online converter to convert the figure into Kilometres and then Miles and the AU figure works out like this :

.0231487 AU = 3,462,996 Km or 2,151,805 miles

(Ok.....fair enough me thinks.....it is what it is etc.....now what ?)

After further reading about MOID it became clear that there are two possible MOID related figures you can get. There is plain old MOID which gives you the distance at which two orbits cross (basically how far apart the orbits are when they cross), then there's an MOID which can be prefixed by the name of a planet or some other object ie. in this case EARTH MOID. The distance figure produced with this type of MOID is actually the distance between the two objects (not, as i first understood it, as the distance between two orbits which to my mind is a subtle yet important difference !).

So.....at the time of the 'solution date' (Oct.15th).....the nearest predicted distance the Earth and the Comet would get to each other would be 2,151,805 miles (i'm a bit of an old fossil and prefer thinking in terms of miles ;) ).

(Fair enough.....sounds like a fair distance to me......ok.....move along now.....nothing to see here me thinks!)

I usually get to a point when i'm trying to learn something new when i've simply got to leave it for a while and do something else because i start to get that 'BRAIN FULL' feeling so off i went to catch up on who's saying what on YouTube (nice to let someone else do the thinking for five minutes :p ).

As i'm 'on one' at the moment with regards anything to do with Comet Ison, these are the type of videos i'm mostly looking at (i'll put one i came across at the end of the post which i thought was really cool !).

One of the videos i watched was this one by SuspiciousObservers.....

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.....the whole video is interesting but what caught my eye in particular was the screenshot of the JPL Orbit Determination Parameters for Comet Ison which appears at about 11 seconds into the video.

Of course, my head was still full of what i'd been reading earlier and i recognised straight away the figures were different without really understanding what i was looking at. According to this screenshot of the JPL orbital data, on October 14th at 17:14 the EARTH MOID was .0231734 AU ( 3,466,691 Km or 2,154,101 miles).

A quick back of the envelope calculation told me that in the period of approx.16 hours Comet ISON had gotten 2,296 miles closer to the Earth. For my own amusement, i tried to work out how much closer the two objects would be when their orbital paths crossed on about November 1st (?) and came up with a figure of 895,440 miles closer (2296 divided by the 16 hours to get the miles per hour then multiplied by 390 hours to the end of the month).

I'm probably missing something here and i did say i'd gotten myself confused a bit but i think it's possible the Earth and Comet Ison could be as close as 1,256,365 miles apart when their orbital paths cross. Apparently, one LD (Lunar Distance) is about 238,855 miles which means that Comet Ison could be about 5 LD at its closest on its inbound journey.....sounds pretty close to me !

I suppose the question has to be how close do these things need to be before they start having an effect (if any) on the Earth and it's systems ?

Sadly dear reader that's not quite the end of my musings :rolleyes:

While i was looking at all this in total bewilderment a light-bulb went on and it suddenly occurred to me that all this is based on the EARTH MOID . The next question surely has to be what is the actual MOID ? Exactly how close do the two orbital paths of the Earth and the Comet get ? What is the MOID (anyone) ? Surely knowing this figure will tell us how close the Earth will get to the comet tail as we swing towards it ?

Ok.....i think i've probably done myself (and everyone else) in with all this but just putting it out there is all. Hopefully someone can follow my thought processes and highlight any flaws in my thinking of which i'm sure there are many :(

(While on my comet travels i came across this really neat blog that has some great graphics to help with the timeline of the comets journey through the inner solar system. I've highlighted in bold the introduction to the site which will hopefully encourage you to look into it some more with a link to the site to follow :cool: )

Thanks everyone.....i think this is the biggest post i've ever done.....i'm now off to lay down in a darkened room :grouphug:

The ISON atlas

There are lots of blogs and websites about Comet ISON now, as you’ll already know if you’ve done a Google search for “Comet ISON”, but if all you want is somewhere to go to tell you and show you, with no fuss, where to look for Comet ISON in the sky later this year, then this is the place.

If you’re wanting more than this – if you want the scientific background to the comet, tips on how to photograph it, advice on how to observe it, slightly ranting diatribes against the nutters and fruit loops who have tried to hijack Comet IOSN and turn it into the latest “The End is Nigh!” tale of doom, I have a proper Comjet ISON blog you might like to visit…

http://waitingforison.wordpress.com/

But back to basics. Here you’ll just find lots and lots of simple finder charts which will help you locate Comet ISON in the sky later this year. They were created using the popular “Sky Safari” Android and iOS phone app, which I can’t recommend highly enough. If you are a “smartphone” or tablet owner witrh an interest in astronomy then really you need to download the app as soon as you’ve finished reading this page. There are several different versions of the app, of increasing complexity and, of course price, but the free one will be invaluable to you if you’re wanting to follow Comet ISON as it moves through the sky later this year.

A quick note on the charts. They look very dramatic don’t they! Calm down. At the moment, NO astronomical software can accurately show, or predict, the lengths of comet tails, they just can’t. So if you see a chart here and think “Wow! Look at the length of that tail!!! I can’t WAIT to see THAT!!!” please be aware that it probably won’t look anything like that in reality! Please, just use the charts as rough guides to figure out where, and when, to look for the comet in relation to your local horizon and the Moon and other objects in the sky.

The tails shown on these charts should only be thought of as rough guides to the direction the tail might be pointing in at the time; we won’t know how impressive Comet ISON is going to be for months yet.

Having said that, I hope and think you’ll find these charts useful in planning ahead when and where to look for, observe and maybe even photograph Comet ISON later this year. It might be the best comet for centuries, or it might be a lot less impressive than that, we just don’t know yet. But we do know where it will be in the sky and this blog’s aim is simple – to help YOU find Comet ISON in YOUR sky later this year.

By the way, if you’ve already had a peek at some of the charts and thought “They’re tiny!” don’t panic. Clicking on them will enlarge them.
One final thing. Please note that these charts are “drawn” for mid-northern latitudes, so if you live a lot further north or south you might need to take that into account, ok?

Right, introduction over. Go and explore the Atlas and its charts, and start planning where, and when, YOU will be able to see Comet ISON.

http://isonatlas.wordpress.com/#respond


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[loveoneanother]

According to the latest data released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Comet Ison has moved 10,755 miles closer to the Earth at it's closest approach based on observations taken up to October 21st 2013.

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ison;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#elem

This now puts the total distance between Comet Ison and the Earth at 2,141,051 miles at it's closest approach or 0.0230330 AU.

According to my research, Comet Ison (if it was classified as an asteroid or other near earth object) would be classed as Potentially Hazardous. Any Near Earth Object (NEO) with an AU of 0.05 or less is considered Hazardous.

Looking at the historical records for close comet approaches to the Earth, Comet Ison (if it survives it's journey around the sun) would be right up there as one of the closest comets there has ever been.

Have a look for yourself by clicking on the following link. The important column is the one on the left that shows the AU distance and bear in mind the current AU of 0.0230330 being given by JPL :

http://www.minorplanetcenter.org/iau/lists/ClosestComets.html

I don't know.....what am i missing here ? If someone can tell me how i might be getting this all wrong i would very much appreciate it. Almost everywhere i look, most people are saying the comet will be 30+ million miles away from the Earth at it's closest :(

Thanks for reading everyone.....loveoneanother :grouphug:

(A description of what EARTH MOID means :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_orbit_intersection_distance )

[KiwiElf]

Any potential risk is what may lie in the tail of the comet as we pass throught it... twice. Possible debris, which if it's ice, will evaporate in Earth's atmosphere. If its composition is made up of something other than ice, then possibly we may get something a little more significant: certain elements or chemicals evaporating in the atmosphere (which have been blamed in the past for the black plague, flu's, outbreaks ... you name it. Nothing conclusively proven on that tho). There's speculation that there are other objects or a debris trail near or following ISON (the latter may be because that's the area of space we happen to passing through at the time = possible meteorite strikes. All these potential hazards are really there daily.

As for the "objects" or UFOs which are claimed to be orbiting ISON, that has not really been proven as yet - just another YOUTube video - which could be faked - claiming to be from the Chinese Space program.

My bet is if anything, it may be a visually impressive comet and tail, at this time.

If its estimated closest proximity to the Earth will be as given above, then it's still almost 8-9 x the distance from Earth to the Moon, the comet itself is unlikely to cause any threat. :) (The Moon is 405,718 km from Earth approx (252,101 miles).

ANALOGY: It would be like a small, Radio Controlled toy speedboat (ISON) zipping past the Queen Mary (Earth): the wake of the Queen Mary (Earth) might affect the speedboat (gravity), but have virtually no affect the other way around.

The stronger "magnet" in any case, is the Sun. ;)

BTW, 1 x AU or Au (au) means Astronomical Unit. Now defined as exactly 149,597,870,700 m (92,955,807.3 mi) or 149,597,871 kilometers, or roughly the average Earth–Sun distance.

[Valle]

Nice Ison 3D-visualisering
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ison/

[loveoneanother]

Here's the latest couple of blogs from the Comet Ison Observing Campaign (CIOC) team which are an interesting read (is there a guarded admission in the first linked blog about the connection between comets and solar activity?) :

http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/comets-in-solar-wind

http://www.isoncampaign.org/why-does-ison-look-green

Kiwi-elf.....thanks for your earlier post.....you gave me plenty to think about that's for sure.....I've been busy researching comet-tails ever since you posted (good timing too in helping me to understand some of what is being said in the first of the above linked CIOC blogs) :)

Can i ask you about something you posted ?

You said : "Any potential risk is what may lie in the tail of the comet as we pass through it.....twice."

I'm speculating wildly here but isn't there a third, earlier pass of the comet's 'gas' tail through the Earth as the comet swings around the sun below the ecliptic. The only reason i'm thinking along these lines is because i've read that the 'gas' tails of comets have been know to exceed 1AU (the distance between the Sun and the Earth) and because of the shallow angle at which ISON goes down through, around and back up through the ecliptic.

Isn't it possible (more speculating again) that if ISON survives it's journey around the Sun and previously unexposed surfaces begin rapid out-gassing, there will be a super-charged 'gas' tail sweeping around in an arc just below the ecliptic plane on which the Earth is sitting before the comet re-aligns itself for it's outward journey away from the sun ?

Added to the current increase in Earth directed solar activity, wouldn't an extended Earth directed 'gas' tail put extra stresses on the Earth's magnetosphere and subsequently the Earth's atmosphere ?

I may have this all wrong (more than likely) for whatever reason so all i can say in my defence of this wishy-washy type of thinking is i'm not scientifically trained or scientifically educated in any way and all i'm really doing is thinking out loud.

Any pointers will, as always, be most appreciate and once again my thanks for a very thought-provoking post :)

(As an addition, i'd like to offer you an anthropocentric analogy along similar lines to the geocentric analogy you gave in your earlier post with the toy speedboat and the Queen Mary.

Imagine a celestial airport floating in space which is at the hub of 36 equidistant runways which are all pointing in to the centre. I feel like i'm walking across runway Number 1 around the very outer perimeter of the airport heading for runway Number 2, aware that somewhere on one of the runways ahead of me, the biggest jet-liner i'm ever likely to see is about to make a fly-by.

Being a celestial airport it has no landing strips as such but that doesn't matter because all the jet-liner is scheduled to do is fly in towards the airport, swing around the back of it then attempt one of the trickiest manoeuversever in the space-flight handbook, the reverse exit, flying out backwards over the same runway it came in on.

As an observer of this once in a lifetime event, all i need to be mindful of, as i continue my steady and relentless journey around the airport perimeter, is the jet-wash and the pollution :)

[KiwiElf]

Hi Loveoneanother,
Thank you - I am very much an amateur when it comes to astronomical things, and am still on (a steep!) learning curve myself ;)

ISON is a bit of a question mark in terms of what it will do; using Valle's example above with a bit of modification to incorporate Earth's position at those points in time, "apparently" we fly through the tail of ISON as it's going in, and again - IF it survives it's slingshot around the sun - as its going back out again. (Like we're sort-of travelling at right angles to the path - ie, let's imagine the speed boat is smoking, leaving a wide trail of smoke that hangs around a while too ;) - and has crossed the Queen Mary's bow to the right and then does a U turn - (more like a rounded "V") and crosses her bow again, heading to the left. We pass through the smoke trail twice, so to speak. (Not sure about 3 x - I'm still learning about that one as well!)

I strained my eyes this morning at 5:30 am just as dawn was breaking but unfortunately, low haze prevented anything on the horizon to about +10 degrees being seen. Regulus & Mars were easily visible and serve as good "pointers": (to our N-E roughly). From our Point of View, ISON now lies down and to the right of Mars, (Regulus is above and to the left of Mars, almost at a 45 degree angle). ISON is at a slightly flatter angle if you drew a line through Regulus to Mars and about half the relative viewable distance again (in 2D) between the two. Relatively speaking, ISON will continue to move further to the right on that path (toward the Sun, which is just out of view to the right of the frame) as time progresses, before doing its turn.

PIC (Below) - Frame Grab from Redshift 7 Planetarium software at 5:50 am our Local time this morning.

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Click to enlarge - ISON is between the two bright green markers, below & to the right of Mars. Keep in mind, it was dawn here at this time so many of these stars were not visible ;)

The orange type data in the top left corner gives my viewing position (Auckland, NZ). (You might just be able to make out Jupiter's position under the type)
The wide info box up to the right is ISON's position at the time.
Recommended software (or similar) to have BTW ;)

http://astronomy-software-review.toptenreviews.com/redshift-review.html

With regard to your other questions re impact on Earth, I would be guessing at best. Recommend someone with much more knowledge than I answer those for you (Amzer Zo - where are you, buddy? ;) - I would imagine very little affect from the comet or tail itself, other than what I said previously, but who knows?) :)

Your airplane/runway analogy is also most thought provoking, but I think it would be more akin to a "smoking RC model airplane" in this case in terms of relative size and "wake"? :)

[KiwiElf]

Loveoneanother - As you're interested in comets, there may actually be two comets visible on the 14th November; This frame grab projects where ISON will be visible in our end of the world (at [1]), but a second comet, ENCKE, will also be possibly visible to the right and near the horizon at 05:20 our local time [2] - it will be closer to the Earth than ISON, but probably the glare of the Sun will make it too hard to "see". (This has got to be a first! - Two comets visible in close proximity!) Projected data for each is in the info boxes above.

PIC: Comets ISON & ENCKE - 14 November 2013 - 05:20 NZ Local Time - Click to enlarge

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Encke

[MariaDine]

Comets are very important...but, what worries are the ever erratic asteroids....:flame::flame::flame:



ASTEROIDS names list -

http://www.nofs.navy.mil/festsci/list/astname.html

-------------------------------

..........a place to start searching :)
Namasté

[Snowflower]

I think it is possible that Ison is the blue kachina and the incoming object so many people are seeing in the southwest sky is the red kachina. Ison is blue. The other one is reddish when observed thru telescope. It also is not round, but appears to be winged - in looks. It is planetary size, not plane size. Historical accounts cite a "winged destroyer." I can't remember - is the blue the destroyer and red the purifier or visa versa in Hopi teachings? Anyway - no one has any idea what that red thing is, how long it will take to get here, where "here" will be - and NASA is still pretending it isn't there.

[Wind]

I think it is possible that Ison is the blue kachina and the incoming object so many people are seeing in the southwest sky is the red kachina. Ison is blue. The other one is reddish when observed thru telescope. It also is not round, but appears to be winged - in looks. It is planetary size, not plane size. Historical accounts cite a "winged destroyer." I can't remember - is the blue the destroyer and red the purifier or visa versa in Hopi teachings? Anyway - no one has any idea what that red thing is, how long it will take to get here, where "here" will be - and NASA is still pretending it isn't there.

I've been thinking about the same thing. Blue Kachina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Star_Kachina) is the final messenger and Red Kachina is the destroyer. Could Sun be the destroyer or will it be a different object like Planet X? Hard to say.

Latest image of Ison from amateur observer Bruce Gary (http://brucegary.net/ISON/), he has been studying it enormously.

http://oi43.tinypic.com/wbot9h.jpg

[Sidney]

I found this video to be informative.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZspLjRW702c

[loveoneanother]

I've been trying desperately not to let my posts turn into the 'watch the video and listen to what someone else thinks' type of posts because i want to do my own research and share what 'i think' for a change but sometimes you come across something that just blows you away and it has to be done :)

I think i spent the whole time watching the following video holding my breath (i don't recall breathing at all which usually means i'm pretty focussed on what i'm seeing and hearing which is a good sign) and when it got to the part where the guy mentioned noctilucent clouds looking blue i thought wow, does that bit of info tie in with what some of the previous posters have been saying about the blue kachina ?

I can't say i know much about the blue kachina thing but even so, after the posts earlier about it, i started wondering how was it possible for our ancient ancestors to see something blue in the sky when they didn't have the benefits of the technology we have today ? I mean, i've never looked up and seen a blue object in the sky so how was this possible ?

I then got to thinking maybe it was something caused by atmospheric 'pollution' (or at least whatever the ancient equivalent to pollution was back then) and started thinking about volcanic eruptions sending smoke into the atmosphere affecting the colour spectrum or things burning on the ground like forest fires causing the same phenomena. I even started wondering whether it was the ancients themselves that altered the composition of the atmosphere somehow because i'm guessing there was a lot of burning of all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff going on all over the place ?

Unfortunately for me though, without digging into this type of thinking more thoroughly, all i could do was put such thoughts on the back-burner as a maybe and leave it at that !

The whole noctilucent cloud thing smacked me straight between the eyes and i thought that's it surely ? If an 'unfamiliar' object is moving across the sky close to the Earth's atmosphere and noctilucent clouds are blue, wouldn't that make the passing object look like it was blue too ?

Could be.....right ? Or is this something else i'm getting completely wrong ? I dunno, maybe i should forget about the 'thinking for myself' bit after all !

Here's the video anyway. I hope someone gets something from it like i did.....wow is all i can say :)

imduPbBbt-0

[greybeard]

The ancients knew so much about movement of planets and stars I sometimes think we are just starting to catch up.

Chris

[loveoneanother]

Loveoneanother - As you're interested in comets, there may actually be two comets visible on the 14th November; This frame grab projects where ISON will be visible in our end of the world (at [1]), but a second comet, ENCKE, will also be possibly visible to the right and near the horizon at 05:20 our local time [2] - it will be closer to the Earth than ISON, but probably the glare of the Sun will make it too hard to "see". (This has got to be a first! - Two comets visible in close proximity!) Projected data for each is in the info boxes above.

PIC: Comets ISON & ENCKE - 14 November 2013 - 05:20 NZ Local Time - Click to enlarge

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Encke

Hello Kiwi-elf : Thanks for your contributions to this thread. I'm trying my best to keep up to date with all the latest Comet Ison news and post anything of interest here but it's not easy when other areas of life are demanding attention :(

I'm sorry to lay my astronomical ignorance on you again but could you tell me whether the amateur astronomy folks also do orbital calculations as part of their hobby or is that sort of thing more technical in nature and is best left to the 'professionals' ? I've looked at some amateur astronomy blogs and most seem to focus on the comet itself looking at things like the brightness, the coma, the tail etc.

I'm wondering how we would get the updated orbital calculation for Comet Ison if the US government decides to have another shutdown as the comet goes around the Sun ?

It has been said by Mr.Ryan and others that the amateur and backyard astronomers have their collective eyes on Space and any or all of them would flag up anything out of the ordinary going on 'out there'. Would that also be true for something like a change in trajectory of a comet like Ison or are we at the mercy of the likes of JPL with that one :confused:

I think what i'm getting at here is if, for whatever reason (solar flaring?), NASA shuts down again as Comet Ison goes around the sun (as happened when the comet went by Mars), would those in the amateur astronomy community be able to re-calculate whether there have been any significant changes in Ison's orbital path and trajectory or would it be more a case of 'observing' the night sky to figure out what changes if any have occurred ? I'm also thinking as the comet is expected to be a naked-eye object if it survives it's journey around the Sun, seeing a big long tail is good, seeing a short stubby tail not so good.....what do you think :rolleyes:

As you can probably guess, i still haven't been able to resolve this EARTH MOID business and still don't know why the latest orbital data up to October 28th has an Earth Distance of 0.429 AU (39,878,041 miles) and an Earth MOID (Minimum Orbit Intersect Distance) of 0.0231545 AU (2,152,345 miles) ? Why are these two figures so far apart ? What is being measured here ?

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ison&orb=1

Amazing photo by Damian Peach to finish :)

http://www.damianpeach.com/deepsky/c2012_s1_2013_10_27rgb.jpg

[Wind]

Interesting!

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[KiwiElf]

Ahhhh, that's a very good question! The Redshift software I'm using allows me to update from different sources, but of course, that's dependant on someone at the source putting in the new information, ie trajectory, distance and oribital path - if there is one. (I'm plugging into them very soon for updates). Plotting a faraway comet's trajectory & orbital path is one thing, but ISON is way more tricky I would guess because I don't think even NASA know what it will do as it changes course around the Sun.

Redshift 7 allows the user to directly input data themselves, but that's way over my head just yet! They have a "Live" community service and forum where members can chat, compare notes and share files. (It's free).

http://www.redshift-live.com/

Ummm not quite sure where to draw the line at "amateur astronomers" (I would be at the extreme amateur end I'm afraid ;)). I imagine there will be plenty of other sources should USG/NASA shut down again.

ENCKE will disappear from view quite quickly as its heading on a much closer course toward us, but both should be visible to the naked eye very soon, depending where you are. (Believe me, dragging myself out of bed at 5 am is an effort! - we haven't had much luck with the weather lately!). Am hopping between this thread and "Sun Stuff" too.

Fantastic photo on the previous page btw! :)

EDIT: Amzer Zo has some great astronomical knowledge as does Bill himself - I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you dropped them a pm. (Or any other members with Astronomy knowledge)

[KiwiElf]

Here are the projections of Comets ISON [1] & ENCKE [2] on 5th November 2013 at 01:40 am - viewed from London (sorry, I don't know how far South you are in England, ;))This seems to imply they will be visible?

Click to enlarge or download

23482.

You're luckier than us in KiwiLand as these objects are moving downward toward the horizon from your relative Point of View, so should also be visible long before in the night sky if you can locate Regulus and Mars as pointers :)

Have just updated the projections prior to this framegrab, but Redshift doesn't appear to show the orbits of these comets :(

[loveoneanother]

Observers perplexed by Comet ISON's erratic performance

Joe Rao, Space.com

With just one month to go before its dramatic solar rendezvous, skirting to within a hairbreadth of the surface of the sun, Comet ISON continues to befuddle observers with its performance en route to the sun.

Based on a compilation ofComet ISON observations from observers worldwide as of Oct. 24, the comet, once proclaimed as possibly the "Comet of the Century" was running about 1.3 magnitudes, or 3.3 times fainter, than the "official" brightness forecast issued by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. As the comet comes down the home stretch of its long journey before finally grazing to within 730,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of the sun, great uncertainty continues regarding whether or not it will remain disappointingly dim or whether it will end up evolving into a spectacularly bright object.

Carl Hergenrother of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Ariz., noted that part of the uncertainty is due to what wavelengths the comet is observed in: "Visual and CCD-V observations do show a comet that is brightening at a normal rate (perhaps even faster than normal for a dynamically new comet) while CCD-R observations show a comet that is barely brightening at all. CCD-R sees predominately dust in contrast with visual and CCD-V, which have large gas components. It seems that over the past month or so ISON's gas production rate has increased as expected while its dust production rate has not," Hergenrother said. "I don't really know what this means but something has to give, either the dust production picks up or the gas production slows down." [Photos of Comet ISON: A Potentially Great Comet]

Looking weird
The highly regarded comet observer John Bortle is just as perplexed by the comet's recent appearance, commenting that the recent images along with his own visual impression, is "downright weird." He adds that, "There is a bright, miniature, long-tailed comet situated within a much larger, but very much fainter and diffuse halo of a coma."

"Those visual people using larger telescope also often remark about the odd way the comet looks, while those using relatively small scopes and big binoculars report seeing a larger, more-or-less faint but uniform cometary mass," he added. "This comet is currently at a distance from the sun where it should no longer exhibit such a dichotomy of appearance.”

Bortle has observed several hundred comets and yet, he writes, "At this stage of the game, with the comet about to cross the orbit of Earth, I cannot recall any previous comet in my 50-plus years of comet observing looking quite like this. So, what does ISON's current look foretell, or mean? I honestly don't know. All I can say is I don't like the odd look of it at this time."

One step forward, one step back
Around Oct. 19, ISON seemed to suddenly brighten at a more rapid pace. On Oct. 21, Arizona observer Bruce Gary (who was the first to image the comet after it emerged from out of the glare of the sun on Aug. 12) wrote, "The comet (coma plus tail) continues a dramatic brightening trend that started Oct 19. The inner coma has brightened (due perhaps to an outburst of gases). This next week could be busy - and exciting!" [Potentially Dazzling Comet ISON: 8 Essential Facts]

But just four days later, with the comet showing signs of fading a bit rather than brightening, Gary, sounding almost a bit exasperated commented, "I don't know what's going on with this comet!"

Analyzing all the observations made since Sept. 4 shows that ISON is responding to the sun more like a solid body would respond, rather than as a typical "fluffy" comet.

Time Running Out
Whatever is happening, Comet ISON continues on its way in toward the sun and crossed the Earth's orbit on Wednesday at 6 p.m. EDT.

For the last couple of months, observers watching the comet brighten at what has seemed to be a frustratingly slow pace are still waiting for a more rapid brightening trend. That may still happen, but time is now running out; four weeks from Thursday will be the comet's moment of truth as it whips around the sun.

Will it remain disappointingly dim? Will it finally brighten up? Will it still be completely intactwhen it sweeps back out into space or will the sun's extreme heat and tremendous tidal forces cause it to fracture into several pieces? At Space.com we will continue to monitor the comet's future behavior and provide any new updates in the days to come, so stay tuned!

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/observers-perplexed-comet-isons-erratic-performance-8C11512045



Journey of Comet ISON on 27th October 2013

A short timelapse video, covering 69 minutes of imaging time from astronomical darkness state to civil twilight state, on 27 October 2013. From the video you can see the reduced visibility of Comet ISON as the sky was becoming brighter gradually. Moon was also visible with an illumination of about 50%.

The nucleus of Comet ISON is still intact and its current magnitude is about 8. You will also see an image as a result of stacking 46 images together as well as an inverted image in the video. NGC 3428 is also visible in the video near the two brightest stars on the lower left.

Comet ISON made its maiden journey into the inner solar system and it will make its closest approach to the Sun on 28 November 2013. Nobody can tell exactly if it will sizzle or fizzle but if Comet ISON survives its closest encounter with the Sun, it might put on a dazzling show for people living in the Northern Hemisphere throughout the night in December 2013.

Comet ISON will be closest to Earth on 26 December 2013 and it will become dimmer as its distance from the Sun increases. Comets are notoriously unpredictable so let's keep our fingers crossed!


http://vimeo.com/77912917

[panopticon]

Thanks L1A for this excellent thread and KiwiElf for such good contributions.

I only just found this thread and really enjoyed reading your learning processes.

Comet Lovejoy surprised everyone back in December 2011 as it was expected to break up.

Here's some short vid's of it from STEREO A & B (source (http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/item.php?id=stereoimages&iid=176)).

Remember that the tail of a comet always points away from the Sun due to the solar wind. The second video is my favourite from this selection as it shows Lovejoy skipping about in a million degree temperatures.

FT6WUOlZ9Nc

BkMMNkPo104

Ma2Ag2L24CU

5veo7TVBbJE

[MariaDine]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-myl_sHKuo_Y/UnEd_4xbtQI/AAAAAAAAbsA/vq3PG2RzVyI/s1600/cometa_ison_27out2013_20131030-100056_big.jpg

[loveoneanother]

Thanks L1A for this excellent thread and KiwiElf for such good contributions.

I only just found this thread and really enjoyed reading your learning processes

Hello panopticon.....i saw your post about Comet ISON on the 'Sun Stuff : What's up!' thread and i was wondering how i could get you to post here :)

There's been a couple of nice surprises that's happened with this thread which has given me a bit of a boost because not only did you post here without me trying to figure out how to ask you to (which was a real blessing i can tell you) but kiwi-elf also did something that brought a big smile to my face too :biggrin:

In one of kiwi-elf's earlier posts he (i hope i've got that right and kiwi-elf is a 'he'?) showed me what ISON looks like from his perspective in New Zealand using the redshift astronomy software that he's got and in response to that i'd written out a post back to him asking if i could be cheeky and ask him to take a frame-grab of what ISON would look like from where i am here in England. I'd even looked up the latitude and longitude coordinates for where i am to help but for some reason(?) i changed my mind and deleted the post. Lo and behold kiwi-elf went ahead and did it anyway without me even asking.....how cool is that :cool:

As a 'newbie' to the comet-watching game, i don't know anything about any of the comets that were around previously so i've been off having a bit of a read about the comet - C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) - that you highlighted in your post. I'm trying hard with my posts to stay on point and on topic about ISON so i won't put any links up but what i found most interesting about that comet was how late the discovery was of it's presence and how surprised the professional comet-watchers were with what happened to it as it went around the Sun :confused:

With comet ISON being my first comet-watching experience, the contrast in lead-up time to it's journey around the Sun couldn't be more stark. For someone like me who knows diddly-squat about astronomy and 'space' in general, it really is quite a surreal experience trying to mentally visualise ISON as it speeds it's way in and out of the solar system. As if that wasn't challenging enough, if you then start adding in to the picture all the other objects whizzing around out there, the picture starts to become one of mind-bogglingly epic proportions. Wow, wow and thrice wow is pretty much all that one can be left thinking after trying to take all that lot in to your mind at once for the first time :eek:

Why am i so interested in this particular comet ? I don't know really. I suspect because of it's long lead-in time and all the speculation that's built up around it, i've probably been affected by all the internet based hype that's following it in like it's own little cyber tail of debris. Like everyone else interested in this comet, i read and watch anything and everything that has to do with it so i must be being influenced by this stuff in one way or another. All i know for certain is i will be a happy bunny if after all this waiting, i get to see it streaking across the sky with my own 'naked' eye and i will be even happier to see it disappearing into the distance :rolleyes:

I hope panopticon that you'll continue to post anything you think i or anyone else might find of interest. I don't know how but i always seem to come across something a little different and interesting when i look around the internet about ISON. Hopefully someone else will find the following of interest too (it's an hour long video presentation by D.Carey Lisse speaking at the Keck Observatory about all things 'comet' including ISON).Many thanks to you and everyone else who has posted :)


Dr. Carey Lisse, head of NASA’s Comet ISON Observation Campaign, will present a timely talk on how and when comets were formed, and where they come from. Also a Senior Research Scientist with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Lisse will relate how comets may have helped start life on the Earth, and also how they may have ended it for millions of creatures at least 4 times in the past. He'll also give a bit of the history of comet observing by mankind, and explain how Comet 2012 S1 (ISON) fits into this picture of comets as relics from the beginning of our solar system.

http://www.keckobservatory.org/recent/entry/astronomy_talk_the_wonder_of_comet_ison_a_relic_from_the_beginning_of_the_s

[panopticon]

G'day L1a,

Don't forget to hire a submarine and fill it with food & water to escape the deadly cyanogen gas as suggestion in this 1910 newspaper clipping (source (http://www.universetoday.com/105087/))! :painkiller:

http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/halley-newspaper-clip-475x580.jpg

-- Pan :o

[Nick Matkin]

Don't forget to have a look at the very back of great-grandma's cabinet for her comet pills (http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2010/12/con-men-and-comets.html).

If there are any left, remember that they'll work just as well now as they did in 1910!

Nick

[Hervé]

Oh well... I "said" I wouldn't do it:


[...]

As for cometary tails, trails and trains, here is something to consider and really understand:



well, the thing of it is, you see, that the debris trail is still with us.

[...]


True,

However, since the remnants of Elenin crossed the ecliptic on Sept. 13, anything not substantial that's left of Elenin has been blown above Earth ever since by the solar winds...

So, from an heliocentric point of view, Elenin is currently beyond Earth's orbit and way above Earth's ecliptic orbit.

The only time Earth would presumably run into anything left of that cloud of particles not blown away by solar winds would be Sept. 13 next year. [see this post (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?16101-Is-it-Comet-Elenin-Is-it-Nibiru-Elenin-Updates.&p=293451&viewfull=1#post293451) <--- and this post (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?16101-Is-it-Comet-Elenin-Is-it-Nibiru-Elenin-Updates.&p=293543&viewfull=1#post293543) <--- as well]

Go the JPL site (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=Ison;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb) and check what's Ison's orbit with respect to Earth and see if it's similar to something like Elenin. As far as I am concerned, I am not interested in doing so.

... and here I am...

If I am not completely mistaken, a [planet] MOID is the closest point of intersection between the orbital path of an object and the plane defined by the orbit of said [planet]. That would be the ecliptic for Earth:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9e/4953_DYK.svg/565px-4953_DYK.svg.png


"A low MOID does not mean that a collision is inevitable, however. It is also necessary that the two bodies reach that point in their orbits at the same time..." says "Wiki"



In the case of Ison, it seems that its Earth MOID is going to be reached around November 5th, 2013:


https://fwtinw.dm1.livefilestore.com/y2pFXNyyohZ7wIWtnfvjDhBq5e6PP9hxhIvQ5ZX1m73QdDhie9Zp5kGlLZSWp3E9v_8rnb7-_s8SJSFmTmHp5oEnOhp0qv9moGTSMyg_2NhHYo/Image-2013-11-03-10h-42mn-49.jpg?psid=1




That's also when Ison's "tail" will be co-planar with Earth's ecliptic and Earth herself will be a little more than 1 AU away [space crow's flight] from that spot.

Whereas the closest to Earth said comet will be is computed to be around December 26 [0.42923 AU] or in-between Dec. 21st and 29th via eye-balling from the JPL applet:


https://fwtinw.dm2302.livefilestore.com/y2pCbG-dq_VPAyzWEB6dzX3aRb2wQOGMftIlYFGGYYdGjmGau8gwlD6dOMUqm3_QQtGDfO1iXu7pls-a8T_eMH-6ZEQ4qTMXUqe3x9kGM3JuVA/Image-2013-11-03-9h-53mn-12.jpg?psid=1



https://fwtinw.dm2301.livefilestore.com/y2phigqf3a0IXaCWjZjR1F6vp7JcvK0DsDMJthpP83o6YFVjPVAGNmJYRSCr2uLdv0k4KHDPAYGDuGBKc2LYBxfe8mCzkPVYif69 mdX2xQYOYo/Image-2013-11-03-9h-52mn-37.jpg?psid=1

https://fwtinw.dm1.livefilestore.com/y2pk6OG_hYDVxxkBCJzNZ2x3FcAQlvEBlr_mC0x2GJS7f5xd6gzsYOFUP_AC4gnUB4Xao_495hI9kuJLz_80H5hi-HzG2Zflz04OUaBPvDf7Yk/Image-2013-11-03-9h-52mn-5.jpg?psid=1


Hope this helps?

[panopticon]

Nice Ison 3D-visualisering
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ison/

The link Valle provided is really good and illustrates Amzer Zo's point perfectly.
I don't think there is any risk to Earth from ISON.
If this thread is about being scared of ISON, which I don't think it is, then I'm out of here.
My post about getting in a submarine was having a laugh and not meant to be taken seriously (if that's what happened).
BTW Nick, good one 'bout the pills. Glad you read the link ;)
-- Pan

[panopticon]

Here's another image from Damian Peach (http://www.damianpeach.com/ison.htm) of ISON.
This is from the 24th October:

http://www.damianpeach.com/deepsky/c2012_s1_2013_10_24rgb_small.jpg

Full version here (http://www.damianpeach.com/deepsky/c2012_s1_2013_10_24rgb.jpg).

[Sunny-side-up]

Thankyou Bright Garlick and of course Damian Peach

Well looking at that last image of Ison one thing I can say is; I LOVE it's colour:love:

Tiss my new desktop Backgroundy now

[SilentFeathers]

LN1dI_7macw

[panopticon]

The Comet ISON News (http://www.cometisonnews.com/) site (twitter feed here (https://twitter.com/cometisonnews)) has some pretty good information on it about locating ISON and what it's doing.

Astro Bob (http://astrobob.areavoices.com/) is always cool and full of info as well.

Universe Today (http://www.universetoday.com/) also has some good info (recent Astro Bob article there titled 'Four Comets Haunt the Halloween Dawn! Here’s How to See Them (http://www.universetoday.com/105806/four-comets-haunt-the-halloween-dawn-heres-how-to-see-them/)' was very good).

For those who like photos there's the spaceweather.com Space Weather Gallery (http://spaceweathergallery.com/) which helps keep things in perspective I reckon.
-- Pan

[KiwiElf]

Thanks for that Amzer Zo (perhaps I should have asked you first before volunteering your knowledge, but greatly appreciated! ;))

LOL, Loveoneanother - I suddenly realised that there wasn't much point putting a Kiwi location up when you're in South England! It's your thread after all! ;) Synchronicity works in strange ways, huh?

Please let me know if you need other time/dates from Sth England (hope London was OK?) :) ... And last time I checked, I am a male, heh! :o

[Camilo]

I just got this message from my friend Jelaila Starr, and I thought some of you would find it of interest...

Comet Ison is fast approaching it's perihelion on November 28th. There is much speculation about its identity; is it Nibiru/Planet X? There is also much concern about it hitting Earth. I checked in with the Nibiruans to get their input. Their response is as follows:

Q: is Ison actually Nibiru/Planet X?

A: No, but it is part of Nibiru's solar system.

A: Will Ison hit Earth?

Q: No

So, the comet is not Nibiru and it won't hit Earth. Is that all there is to it? No.

Ison and a Power Grid Collapse

Though the Nibirans stated that Ison would not hit Earth, there is still concern about the prospect of massive solar flares should it break up during its turn around the sun. If that occurs while Earth is on the opposite side of the sun from Ison, we will be fine. But, if Ison breaks up while on the same side if the sun, there could be severe damage done to orbiting satellites. Should that occur, electrical systems would fail, which means the power grid would collapse. I asked the Nibiruans if the comet would break up. Their reply was that there is a 96 percent probability that the comet would remain intact. Don't know about you but that sounds pretty good to me.

Ison and the Return of Christ

Those focused on Biblical prophecy look to find correlations with current events, especially those of an astronomical nature. Ison's passing is being touted as a sign for the return of Christ. Is this accurate? Again I asked the Nibiruans for input. They responded by telling me that Ison is a harbinger for the return of Christ-like consciousness. This change is projected to occur now and continue into 2015.

I feel confident that this is correct because we have been laying the ground work for that new reality for the last several years through grid work combined with intense emotional clearing. Our efforts have produced changes on a global scale that are about to be seen by all. So, the passage of Ison is a sign of the new reality being birthed; not the return of a one individual. With all that said, Comet Ison's passage can be said to be a sign of better times to come.

In closing, though there is a lot of fear mongering going on, but it appears most of it is unfounded. Yes, there is a slight possibility that Comet Ison, our sign of good times ahead, will come with a hefty price, but we have the power to change that. As always, we draw to us the events and circumstances that we need for our personal and collective growth. The way to control that is through doing emotional clearing. If we don't have the fear, we won't need to draw/manifest it.

Right now the "Powers That Be" want you to be afraid. They want you to believe that the power grid will collapse. The more we fear, the more they feed. Personally, I choose not to buy into their view. To me it is an another opportunity to sharpen my skills in altering reality.

Until next time...

Jelaila Starr
The Nibiruan Council
www.NibiruanCouncil.com

[loveoneanother]

Oh well... I "said" I wouldn't do it:

... and here I am...indeed.....here you are :welcome:

If I am not completely mistaken, a [planet] MOID is the closest point of intersection between the orbital path of an object and the plane defined by the orbit of said [planet]. That would be the ecliptic for Earth:

In the case of Ison, it seems that its Earth MOID is going to be reached around November 5th, 2013:

That's also when Ison's "tail" will be co-planar with Earth's ecliptic and Earth herself will be a little more than 1 AU away [space crow's flight] from that spot.

Hope this helps?



Hello Amzer Zo :)

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my question about the Earth MOID, it's very much appreciated.

If you are correct with your explanation, would it be right to assume that with an Earth MOID currently at 2,162,663 miles (0.0232655 AU) calculated from observations taken up to Nov.2nd.....

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ison;orb=1;cov=1;log=0;cad=1#elem

.....then the distance of the comet from the Sun at the Earth MOID point would be 92,955,807 miles (1 AU) minus the Earth MOID of 2,162,663 miles or 90,793,144 miles ?

Looking at the current live distance of the comet from the Sun as of todays date Nov.4th.....

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/perihelion-and-distance/

.....it says the distance of the comet from the Sun is approx 83 million miles and closing. That's a difference of about 7 million miles just going by todays date !

(I'm not sure. Am i thinking along the right lines here with this type of calculation ?)

Also, looking at the ephemeris table below and going by your explanation,wouldn't the point at which the comet reaches the Earth MOID be somewhere between Nov.8th/9th and not Nov.5th (assuming that is, that the Earth MOID point your describing is when the declination moves from the positive to the negative) ? If that is the case, then the Earth MOID point will be when the comet is even closer to the Sun making the disparity in my calculation above even greater !

I've highlighted what i think are the relevant figures in the table below for ease of reference and i look forward to any further clarification you can offer about this perplexing Earth MOID issue :)

EPHEMERIS - NOVEMBER 2013

Last updated October 31st 2013

Date TT R. A. (2000) Decl. Delta r Elong. Phase m1
2013 11 01 11 12 23.8 +06 21 42 1.2300 0.9969 52.0 51.7 7.9
2013 11 02 11 17 32.6 +05 41 31 1.2024 0.9725 51.5 53.0 7.8
2013 11 03 11 22 55.3 +04 59 16 1.1751 0.9479 51.0 54.5 7.7
2013 11 04 11 28 32.7 +04 14 49 1.1484 0.9229 50.4 56.0 7.5
2013 11 05 11 34 26.0 +03 28 02 1.1222 0.8975 49.8 57.5 7.4
2013 11 06 11 40 36.3 +02 38 47 1.0965 0.8719 49.0 59.2 7.2
2013 11 07 11 47 04.8 +01 46 58 1.0716 0.8458 48.2 60.9 7.1
2013 11 08 11 53 52.7 +00 52 26 1.0474 0.8193 47.3 62.7 6.9
2013 11 09 12 01 01.5 -00 04 55 1.0240 0.7924 46.3 64.6 6.7
2013 11 10 12 08 32.6 -01 05 09 1.0016 0.7651 45.2 66.6 6.6
2013 11 11 12 16 27.3 -02 08 21 0.9802 0.7372 43.9 68.7 6.4
2013 11 12 12 24 47.2 -03 14 32 0.9600 0.7089 42.6 70.9 6.2
2013 11 13 12 33 33.9 -04 23 42 0.9411 0.6799 41.1 73.3 6.0
2013 11 14 12 42 48.8 -05 35 46 0.9236 0.6504 39.6 75.7 5.8
2013 11 15 12 52 33.4 -06 50 35 0.9077 0.6202 37.9 78.2 5.6
2013 11 16 13 02 49.2 -08 07 56 0.8936 0.5892 36.0 80.8 5.4
2013 11 17 13 13 37.4 -09 27 28 0.8813 0.5574 34.1 83.6 5.2
2013 11 18 13 24 59.3 -10 48 46 0.8713 0.5247 32.0 86.4 5.0
2013 11 19 13 36 55.6 -12 11 17 0.8635 0.4910 29.8 89.3 4.7
2013 11 20 13 49 27.4 -13 34 19 0.8584 0.4561 27.5 92.3 4.4
2013 11 21 14 02 35.1 -14 57 05 0.8561 0.4199 25.0 95.3 4.1
2013 11 22 14 16 19.5 -16 18 39 0.8569 0.3821 22.5 98.4 3.8
2013 11 23 14 30 41.4 -17 37 59 0.8612 0.3423 19.9 101.4 3.5
2013 11 24 14 45 42.7 -18 53 56 0.8693 0.3002 17.1 104.3 3.0
2013 11 25 15 01 27.3 -20 05 10 0.8819 0.2551 14.3 107.0 2.5
2013 11 26 15 18 04.6 -21 09 58 0.8998 0.2058 11.4 109.3 1.8
2013 11 27 15 35 58.3 -22 05 30 0.9244 0.1502 8.2 110.4 0.7
2013 11 28 15 56 28.2 -22 43 29 0.9594 0.0826 4.6 106.9 -1.3
2013 11 29 16 23 17.5 -19 52 57 0.9762 0.0322 1.8 107.7 -4.5
2013 11 30 16 21 22.4 -16 20 32 0.9125 0.1145 5.3 127.4 -0.2

http://www.cometisonnews.com/ephemeris-november-2013/

[Hervé]

[...]

If you are correct with your explanation, would it be right to assume that with an Earth MOID currently at 2,162,663 miles or 0.0232655 AU (calculated from observations taken up to Nov.2nd).....

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ison;orb=1;cov=1;log=0;cad=1#elem

.....then the distance of the comet from the Sun would be 92,955,807 miles or 1 AU minus the Earth MOID ie 90,793,144 miles.

Looking at the current live distance of the comet from the Sun as of todays date Nov.4th.....

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/perihelion-and-distance/

.....it says the distance of the comet from the Sun is approx 83 plus million miles and closing. I'm not sure if i'm thinking along the right lines here or not and whether my calculation fits in with your explanation ? What do you think ?

[...]

Hi loveoneanother,

I see no flaws in your thinking :)

I just used an approximate date for Ison's Earth MOID where I gathered it changes from above-Ecliptic to below-Ecliptic on the JPL applet.

My computation is as simple as yours:

1AU - 0.02326 = 0.97674 AU for its distance to the Sun's average position (from the ecliptic) and which would give a date closer to November 2sd according to the JPL applet (to keep in mind that the graphics are also approximations).

So, yes, the disparity seems to be bigger from the declination given with respect to the Celestial Equator...


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/AxialTiltObliquity.png






http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Ra_and_dec_on_celestial_sphere.png


Hope this helps and is not too confusing?

[loveoneanother]

I thought i'd take a rest from my orbital elements studies (brain frying :( ) and catch up on some Comet ISON reading. I came across the following article today on the UNIVERSE TODAY site and thought it was worth a post :)

I've only copied the first part of the article to whet the appetite as to what it's about. To read the article in full, please click on the UNIVERSE TODAY link at the end. (I really liked the second picture showing the constellations and the four comets together and couldn't stop staring at it.....amazing :cool: ) :

Four Comets Haunt The Halloween Dawn! And Here's How To See Them.

by BOB KING on October.30.2013


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Four-comet-panel.jpg

No fewer than four bright-ish comets greet skywatchers an hour before the start of dawn. From upper left counterclockwise: C/2013 R1 Lovejoy, 2P/Encke, C/2012 X1 and ISON. Credits: Gerald Rhemann, Damian Peach, Gianluca Masi and Gerald Rhemann


Get your astronomical trick-or-treat bags ready. An excursion under the Halloween morning sky will allow you fill it in a hurry — with comets! We’ve known for months that ISON and 2P/Encke would flick their tails in the October dawn, but no one could predict they’d be joined by Terry Lovejoy’s recent comet discovery, C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy), and the obscure C/2012 X1 (LINEAR). The last surprised all of us when it suddenly brightened by more than 200 times in a matter of days. Almost overnight, a comet found on precious few observing lists became bright enough to see in binoculars. Now comet watchers the world over are losing sleep to get a glimpse of it.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Halloween-comets-4_edited-11.jpg

Rarely are four comets this bright in the same quadrant of sky. This map shows the sky facing east about two hours before sunrise on Oct. 31. Take note of the three stars are labeled “Beta”. These are (from top) Beta Cancri, Beta Leonis and Beta Coma Berenices. We’ll use these three stars and the planet Mars to hone in on the comets’ locations in the maps below. Stellarium


Since it’s unusual to have four relatively bright comets in the same chunk of sky at the same time, you don’t want to miss this opportunity. Now that the moon has dwindled to the slightest crescent, this is THE time to hunt for these ghostly apparitions before dawn.

http://www.universetoday.com/105806/four-comets-haunt-the-halloween-dawn-heres-how-to-see-them/

[loveoneanother]

Thanks for that Amzer Zo (perhaps I should have asked you first before volunteering your knowledge, but greatly appreciated! ;))

LOL, Loveoneanother - I suddenly realised that there wasn't much point putting a Kiwi location up when you're in South England! It's your thread after all! ;) Synchronicity works in strange ways, huh?

Please let me know if you need other time/dates from Sth England (hope London was OK?) :) ...thanks.....And last time I checked, I am a male, heh! :o

Hello again KiwiElf.....i hope you're still around following this thread :)

You were right about Amzer Zo being the go-to person with regard that Earth MOID business. Weren't those two graphics showing axial-tilt and the celestial sphere great ! The realisation that i'd made a mistake thinking the angle of declination was an indicator as to where Comet ISON was in relation to the ecliptic was a little embarrassing. I had it all figured out too (well i thought i did). Once the declination angle went from positive to negative, that was the moment i thought the comet went through the ecliptic and i was really looking forward to seeing whether anything significant would happen at that moment ? To then find out that the angle of declination didn't have anything to do with the comet's position relative to the ecliptic and that it was already below the ecliptic was a real shock and a big dollop of disappointment !

I don't know what it is about the ecliptic but for me there is something almost mystical about it. It's just amazing to me that all the planets go around the Sun in the same direction on roughly the same orbital plane. i know this is gonna sound a bit out there but it's almost like inside the heliosphere, there is a force or something above the ecliptic and a similar one below the ecliptic and the planets are rolling around in some sort of 'gap' created between the two. Weird huh ?Somewhere along the path of this deluded line of thinking, i got to wondering whether anything significant happens when an object such as a comet goes speeding across this gap between these two forces (ie. passing through the ecliptic) and that's why i was disappointed i missed ISON going through the ecliptic? I think i'm gonna have to go back and see if that increase in solar activity there was recently had anything to do with it ?

Ok, enough of my mindless ramblings. What i really wanted to do was pass the following couple of videos along to you (or anyone else who might be interested). I don't know how many of the other members who have posted on this thread are amateur or professional astronomers who might enjoy talks given by other astronomers, the only person i can think of who might be interested is you.

I really enjoyed the talks and i'm sure you will too. There was a point in one of the videos where the speaker was talking about the lack of funding for observatories in the southern hemisphere especially in Australia which i found interesting and i thought of you not far away in New Zealand. (What's the astronomy community like in New Zealand and are there any big 'professional' type observatories located there ?) Apparently according to one of the speakers, there are areas of the night sky where comets and asteroids are not being looked for.....who knew :unsure:



SPA (Society for Popular Astronomy) Comet Section Director Jonathan Shanklin describes how comets are discovered, how they behave and what we might see of Comet ISON in December 2013. Talk given to the Society for Popular Astronomy in London on 26 October 2013.


http://vimeo.com/78147816



Prolific comet discoverer Robert McNaught describes the comets he has known, observed and indeed discovered from his early days as a schoolboy when he reported his first observation to the Junior Astronomical Society. He spoke at a meeting of the society, now the Society for Popular Astronomy, on 26 October 2013, at the University of London.


http://vimeo.com/77955589

[Wind]

Tu5BnQWJLLw

[KiwiElf]

Hi there - am just reading up now, and I see on the Sun thread that Ison is being point checked as I reply - interesting ;)

(Amzer Zo's astronomy knowledge is terrific :))

Yes we do have professional Observatories here (Carter Observatory etc), although I'm not too sure what the community is like, (I don't belong to any club... yet!), other than our local Auckland observatory is usually packed with visitors. Unfortunately our weather has been and is crap for the next few days so haven't bothered to do any checking in that regard. (I completely missed the other 2 comets, 4 in total. Awesome!)

I did manage to get a glimpse a couple of mornings back inbetween clouds whizzing by, and you can now see a bright speck to the naked eye where ISON is.

Thank you for the above videos which I will watch a little later when the work is done! :)

[Nick Matkin]

I hope 'Plasma Dave' in the video is just trying to oversimplify to keep away from heavy technical stuff. Protons from solar flares do not 'soak up radio signals'. They ionise the ionospheric D-layer temporarily preventing some radio waves from passing through it.

Plasma Dave also seems to be confusing all sorts of other stuff; EMPs, Carrinton Event, Faraday cages...

Yes, there have been a number of radio disruptions in the past few weeks (you probably didn't notice unless you use HF/short-wave radio) and yes it is due to the second peak in solar-cycle 24 activity. But all caused by Comet Ison?

Is Plasma Dave confusing correlation with causation? This isn't meant to be facetious, but by example I mean: Fewer people use typewriters now and fewer women die in child birth now. There is a correlation here, but not a causation - one didn't cause the other.

Nevertheless his suggestions that people should prepare and support each other is sensible under any conditions.

Nick

[panopticon]

All the comets with the name "Lovejoy" are named after their discoverer Terry Lovejoy (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Lovejoy) an amateur astronomer from Queensland Australia.

Here's a page on his set-up (www.pbase.com/terrylovejoy/search_program).

Here's a gallery with some of his photo's. (http://www.pbase.com/terrylovejoy/comet_photos)

This is from his gallery and is of comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) in 2004:

http://m6.i.pbase.com/u6/terrylovejoy/large/37557246.comet2.jpg

Here's another piccy from Lovejoy. This one is of Comet McNaught from 2007 (C/2006 P1). It's named after the Australian (originally from Scotland but no-ones perfect) astronomer Robert H. McNaught (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._McNaught) who has discovered over 70 comets and 450+ asteroids:

http://m6.i.pbase.com/g6/05/412205/2/73936066.WlrXW2ex.jpg

Lists of observatories:
http://astronomy.org.au/professional/observatories/
http://asa.astronomy.org.au/observatories.html

Of course it's under funded. :faint2:

What government wants to spend money on "star gazing".
Democracies are just popularity contests with the "cool kid" getting voted in.
All run by the same people no matter who is in "power".

-- Pan

[pine boy]

Comet hunting tools...
Skyview cafe
http://www.skyviewcafe.com/skyview.php

Weekly updates on viewable comets...
aerith.net
http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html

I hope you all find this useful and get to go outside and see some comets./

[loveoneanother]

LOL, Loveoneanother - I suddenly realised that there wasn't much point putting a Kiwi location up when you're in South England! It's your thread after all! ;) Synchronicity works in strange ways, huh?

Please let me know if you need other time/dates from Sth England (hope London was OK?) :) ... And last time I checked, I am a male, heh! :o

Can i take you up on your kind offer highlighted above KiwiElf and ask if you wouldn't mind taking a frame grab for me :)

I haven't got any sky-watching equipment and permanently empty pockets means i'm unlikely to have any in the (all important) near-future so i'm totally relying on whatever i might be able to see with the naked-eye. As i've said before, i'm a newcomer to the night-sky watching scene and i'm still a little uncertain where everything is in relation to where i am so you might have to help me out a bit if that's ok ?

In an earlier post of yours (Post 13) if you remember, you did a framegrab of Comet ISON and Comet ENCKE which showed where the two comets were in the night-sky on November 14th from your perspective in New Zealand. I had another look at that frame grab and realised i've done quite a bit of reading about ISON but haven't really looked at ENCKE so i thought i'd have a bit of a read and see what's what?

Wow !!! Just when i thought the excitement levels couldn't get any higher about what's going to happen with ISON, i've managed to add something else to the must see list. I'm assuming everyone else already knows about it and i'm just being my usual astronomically slow self but how close does ENCKE get to MERCURY or what ???

I ran the JPL orbital diagram for ENCKE, moving it forward one day at a time and when it got to about November 19th it seemed to go straight on top of MERCURY. I remember what Amzer Zo said about the JPL orbital graphics being more a rough approximation rather than 100% accurate but even so, it looked pretty close to me !!!

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?ID=c00002_0;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

If i give you the coordinates of the nearest city to where i live in England KiwiElf, do you think you can tell me which direction i need to be looking in around the time ENCKE and MERCURY cross paths that would give me the best chance of seeing anything if anything happens. I've got a feeling this particular event is going to be lost in the glare of the Sun to the naked-eye viewer but even if you could say whether to look East in the morning sky or West in the evening sky just on the off chance of maybe seeing something that would be really helpful. The coordinates are for the city of Brighton and the Latitude is 50 degrees and 50 minutes North and the Longitude is 00 (zero zero) degrees and eight (zero eight) minutes West.

Thanks KiwiElf for any help you can give.....your presence on this thread is much appreciated :)

I found the following video which i hope explains what it is i'm hoping to see between ENCKE and MERCURY :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Ia8awp1X0

(added bit to pine boy : thanks for the skyviewcafe link.....i used it to get the coordinates :thumb: )

[Hervé]

Latest...


Comet ISON Heats Up, Grows New Tail (http://www.universetoday.com/106205/comet-ison-heats-up-grows-new-tail/)

by Bob King on November 7, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday (https://twitter.com/#%21/universetoday) on Twitter


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ison-Damian-Nov6-580x361.jpg (http://www.damianpeach.com/deepsky/c2012_s1_2013_11_06dp.jpg)
Two faint tail streamers are visible between Comet ISON’s green coma and bright star near center. in this photo taken on Nov. 6. They’re possibly the beginning of an ion tail. Click to enlarge. Credit: Damian Peach


I’m starting to get the chills about Comet ISON. I can’t help it. With practically every telescope turned the comet’s way fewer than three short weeks before perihelion, every week brings new images and developments. The latest pictures show a brand new tail feature emerging from the comet’s bulbous coma. For months, amateur and professional astronomers alike have watched ISON’s slowly growing dust tail that now stretches nearly half a degree or a full moon’s diameter. In the past two days, photos taken by amateur astronomers reveal what appears to be a nascent ion or gas tail. Damian Peach’s Nov. 6 image clearly shows two spindly streamers.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ISON-Efrain-Morales-C2012S1_ISON-103113-0917-34ut-L17min-EMr1-421x580.jpg
Early detection of ISON’s possible ion tail on Oct. 31 by amateur astronomer Efrain Morales Rivera in a 12-inch telescope.




http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ISON-Justin-NG-negative-580x314.jpg
The comet on Nov. 4 also shows the new tail structures extending farther from the coma. Credit: Justin Ng


Ion tails (http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/%7Ejewitt/tail.html) are composed of gases like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide blown into a narrow straight tail by the solar wind and electrified to fluorescence by the sun’s ultraviolet light. Being made of ions (charged particles), they interact with the sun’s wind of charged particles. Changes in the intensity and direction of the magnetic field associated with sun’s exhalations kink and twist ion tails into strange shapes. Strong particle blasts can even snap off an ion tail. Not that a comet could care. Like a lizard, it grows a new one back a day or three later.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ISON-map-early-Nov-at-dawn_edited-1-580x429.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/47833278@N02/10709646004/)
Comet ISON plunges sunward across Virgo in the coming days. Watch for it low in the eastern sky shortly before the start of dawn. Click to enlarge and print for outdoor use. Stellarium


A fresh forked tail isn’t ISON’s only new adornment. Its inner coma, location of the bright “false nucleus”, is becoming more compact, and the overall magnitude of the comet has been slowly but steadily rising. Two mornings ago I pointed a pair of 10×50 binoculars ISON’s way and was surprised to see it glowing at magnitude 8.5. Things happen quickly now that the comet is picking up speed While it appeared as little more than a small smudge, any comet crossing into binocular territory is cause for excitement. Other observers are reporting magnitudes as bright as 8.0. Estimates may vary among observers, but the trend is up. Seiichi Yoshida’s excellent Weekly Information about Bright Comets (http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2012S1/2012S1.html) site predicts another half magnitude brightening over the next few days. You can use the map here to spot it in your own glass before the moon returns to the morning sky.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ISON-jets-TRAPPIST.jpg
False color photo taken with the TRAPPIST 60-cm telescope using a narrowband CN (390 nm) filter at 8:45 Universal Time Nov. 5 shows two active jets (small double-plume) in ISON’s inner coma (right) and the dust tail at left. Field of view is 5×5 arc minutes. North is up, east to the left. Credit: Cyrielle Opitom, TRAPPIST team


But wait, there’s more. Emmanuel Jehin (http://www.orca.ulg.ac.be/TRAPPIST/Trappist_Main_Fr/Equipe.html), a member of the TRAPPIST (http://www.orca.ulg.ac.be/TRAPPIST/Trappist_Main_Fr/Home.html) ( TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals in Small Telescopes) team, a group of astronomers dedicated to the detection of exoplanets and the study of comets and other small solar system bodies, reports a rapid rise in ISON’s gas production rate in the past several days. They’ve increased by a factor of two since Nov. 3. Could the spike be connected to the development of an ion tail? Jehin and team have also recorded two active jets coming from the comet’s nucleus using specialized filters. Dust production rates however have remained flat.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ISON-observing-campaign-x8-580x580.jpg
The Comet ISON Observing Campaign is both terrestrial and celestial. Nine different NASA and ESA spacecraft, eight of which are shown here, have observed comet ISON so far. Credit: NASA/ESA


Casey Lisse of the Comet ISON Observing campaign (http://www.isoncampaign.org/) (CIOC) reports that the Chandra X-ray Observatory (http://chandra.harvard.edu/) just became the 9th spacecraft to image the comet . More details and photos should be available soon. The campaign predicts the comet will peak in brightness between -3 to -5 magnitude when it zips closest to the sun on Nov. 28. Want to ride alongside the comet during its passage through the inner solar system? Click on this awesome, interactive simulator (http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ison/).


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LINEAR-comet-1999-disintegration-Hubble-580x463.jpg (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/CometLinear.jpg)


Hubble Space Telescope image of comet C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) that disintegrated around July 23, 2000. Credit: NASA/ESA


Because ISON is a fresh-faced visitor from the distant Oort Cloud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud) that will soon face the full fury of the sun, speculation of its fate has ranged across the spectrum. Everything from breakup and dissolution before perihelion to surviving intact trailing a spectacular dust tail. The comet is currently approaching the 0.8 A.U. mark (74.4 million miles / 120 million km) when previous comets C/1999 S4 LINEAR (http://cometography.com/lcomets/1999s4.html) in 2000 and C/2010 X1 Elenin (http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2011/09/16/comet-elenin-teaches-us-to-sit-still-and-pay-attention/) in 2011 crumbled to pieces and vaporized away. Will ISON have the internal strength to pass the test and venture further into the solar boil? Should it survive, it faces a formidable foe – the sun. Both the intense solar heat and gravitational stress on the comet’s nucleus could easily tear it apart. If this happens a few days before perihelion we’ll be left with little to see, but if ISON busts up a day or two after perihelion, watch out baby. When the comet reappears in the morning sky, it may be missing its head but make it up for the loss with a spectacular tail of fresh dust and ice many degrees in length. This is exactly what happened to Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) in December 2011. After its close graze with the home star, the nucleus disintegrated, producing a striking tail seen by skywatchers in the southern hemisphere.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Lovejoy-Chris-Wyatt-panel-dec22-580x432.jpg
Pictures of Comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy on Dec. 22, 2011 after perihelion passage. Will ISON be a repeat? Credit: Chris Wyatt


The final scenario sees Comet ISON pushing past all barriers intact and ready to put on a splendid show. Whatever happens, I suspect we’re in for surprises ahead. For a more detailed analysis of these possibilities I invite you check out Matthew Knight’s blog (http://www.isoncampaign.org/mmk/what-might-happen) on the CIOC website.

[Sidney]

Tu5BnQWJLLw


I am bumping this. Thank you Wind for posting. This video IMO is the best explanation I have seen regarding the electrical components of comets in relation to space and the surrounding planets and sun.

[Wind]

I am bumping this. Thank you Wind for posting. This video IMO is the best explanation I have seen regarding the electrical components of comets in relation to space and the surrounding planets and sun.

You're welcome and I agree, I suggest to follow that channel on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/davidstighansen/videos

I sincerely wish that I could see that Ison this winter just by looking at the night sky without any devices... I also would love to see some auroras!

[loveoneanother]

This is an extract of the latest update from the CIOC website. To view the full article please click the link at the end of the post. The following image by Damian Peach is referenced in the article and was also in a recent post by Amzer Zo (thanks for the post Amzer Zo). I've used the image again to add some visual appeal to the post and also because it's a pretty cool picture (note the 'tails' in the image) :)

http://www.damianpeach.com/deepsky/c2012_s1_2013_11_06dp.jpg

Comet ISON's Current Status

Latest Update : November 8th 2013

As of this morning, comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) was 0.8AU (74-million miles, 120-million kilometers) from the Sun, and zooming along at 47km/s (105,000mph, 169,000kph). By Monday evening it will be inside of Venus' orbit (not physically near Venus, though). We now only have 20-days until ISON reaches perihelion, at around 18:36UT on November 28, 2013, but we still don't know if it will reach there and - if it does - how long it will last!

In our previous update to this page we commented on a mixed bag of data that heralded both good and bad signs for comet ISON, and raised many questions. Is its dust production rate flattening out, or even tapering off? Or is it dramatically increasing? Or perhaps increasing but not at the rate we'd expect from a comet so close to the Sun already? The comet is clearly still in one piece as of a few hours ago, but how long will that last? Days? Weeks? Indefinitely?

All of these are valid questions, and depending on who you ask, you will get a slightly different response.

Comet ISON is being a particularly odd comet, but this is a good thing! We always felt it would be an interesting object, hence this high-profile observing campaign, and that hunch is paying off. We have an unprecedented array of telescopes pointing at this dynamically new comet, and when the show is finally over (whenever that may be), we will begin to put the pieces together and gain a very complete understanding of this object. Again we urge everyone to read Matthew's latest blog post about what we might expect over the next couple of weeks.

Today there are two results we'll highlight very quickly. The first is one that we mentioned already - namely that the Chandra X-ray telescope made some successful and very interesting detections of comet ISON in EUV and soft x-ray wavelengths. Those observations were spearheaded by the CIOC Chair Casey Lisse (who actually first discovered X-ray emission from comets), and they will absolutely be detailed on this website in the coming days. The other really nice result is yet another jaw-dropping image of comet ISON by astrophotographer Damian Peach. This one is particularly nice as it very clearly shows the new structure in ISON's tail that we recently mentioned. This new feature, which you can see as a fork (actually two forks...) below the main dust tail, is an ion, or gas, tail. We see these all the time in comets, and they are a consequence of solar ultraviolet photons stripping electrons off of the neutral gas that has been released from the comet via a process we call ionization. As ISON gets closer to the Sun, we hope to see some interesting interactions between its tails and the solar wind.

So the bottom line for today is that ISON is still there, still in one piece, and still becoming increasingly visible to observers with binoculars and small telescopes. It's not naked eye, however, and at this point probably won't be before perihelion as it's going to get to close to twilight skies now. Will it be naked eye in December, after perihelion? Maybe...

http://www.isoncampaign.org/Present

[loveoneanother]

Some interesting thoughts here regarding the Sun/Comet connection shared between SuspiciousObservers and friends in the following video. For anyone who hasn't seen one of these 'fly on the wall' type videos before, most of the video is audio only and the darkened out screen (when it comes) is how it's meant to be.

I personally like the dark screen being there while they're talking because i feel like i'm using a different part of my brain to process the information :)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1iJalmk46c&feature=c4-overview&list=UUTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ

[panopticon]

A test of redirecting the SDO for imaging ISON was done a few days ago (http://sdoisgo.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-ison-off-point-testing-today.html) and everything looks good!

Here's hoping for some good images!
-- Pan

[KiwiElf]

Hi Loveoneanother

Hope I've done this correctly: Comet Encke [1] will be further away from us by the time the 19th rolls around - it will be more visible from now up until around the 14th. From a 2-D perspective, it will sit just under Mercury (not sure of the distance from Encke to Mercury) on the 19th, and likely not visible unless you have a telescope/binoculars - (ISON at [2] on the other hand, should be quite visible with a telecope or binoculars)... BUT ... I think you're correct in saying the sky will still be too bright (from the proximity of the Sun) to see either as this represents 3:00 - 4:00 pm your time. Relatively speaking, both will be moving closer towards your South/West direction and downward. (The green arced horizontal line indicates your horizon).

An hour after that, and ISON will be below your horizon - see below :(

(The viewing location at Brighton you gave me is the orange type in the upper left corner of the image)

23635

I think you will have more luck looking in the morning of the 13th, between your East & South/East at around 530 am: Mercury will just be sitting on your horizon at 107 degrees East, Encke will be above and just to the right, Altitude 05 degrees (about half a hand width), ISON will be further toward the right (South/East) at 121 degrees and above at an altitude of 16 degrees (about 1.5 handwidths). Relatively speaking, they are moving up and to the right of your horizon in the South East. By 630am, ISON will be at your SE at an altitude of 23 degrees, ENCKE at 121 degrees SSEast at an altitude of 13 degrees and should be quite visible. Mercury will below it and slightly to the left. Sun up will be roughly 40 min after this, around 7:20 am, but you may be able to see both comets better?

[SilentFeathers]

from spaceweather...


Comet ISON is getting all the press, but it's not even the brightest comet in its own patch of sky. That would be Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1), one of four comets now rising in the east before dawn:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/09nov13/4comets_strip.jpg
Pictured from left to right are exploding Comet LINEAR X1, sungrazing Comet ISON, short-period Comet Encke, and the brightest of them all, Comet Lovejoy. All four are visible in binoculars or backyard telescopes, and Comet Lovejoy (mag. +6.0) is visible to the naked eye from dark-sky sites. Comet ISON is actually one of the faintest of the group; only expanding Comet LINEAR X1 (mag. +8) is more difficult to see.

An apparition of so many comets at once is a rare thing, and amateur astronomers are encouraged to wake up early for a tour of the pre-dawn sky. Dates of special interest include Nov. 15-18 when Comet LINEAR X1 passes by the bright star Arcturus, Nov 17-18 when Comet ISON has a close encounter with Spica, and Nov. 18-20 when Comet Encke buzzes Mercury. These stars and planets make excellent naked-eye guideposts for finding the comets. Meanwhile, bright Comet Lovejoy is approaching the Big Dipper; if you can't see it with your unaided eye, a quick scan with binoculars will reveal it.
http://www.spaceweather.com/

[panopticon]

Here's a short vid by Dr Strong that should help those in the Northern Hemisphere find ISON:

aoXv0y6lV0o
-- Pan

[McMaster]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt2EUToo&list=PLwOAYhBuU3UfvhvcT1lZA6KbSdh0K2EpH&index=3

Also recommend parts 1 & 2 on electric universe.
I think it makes a lot of sense and in my opinion puts us humans in the circuit too and in connection to the rest of the universe.

[loveoneanother]

I think you will have more luck looking in the morning of the 13th, between your East & South/East at around 530 am: Mercury will just be sitting on your horizon at 107 degrees East, Encke will be above and just to the right, Altitude 05 degrees (about half a hand width), ISON will be further toward the right (South/East) at 121 degrees and above at an altitude of 16 degrees (about 1.5 handwidths). Relatively speaking, they are moving up and to the right of your horizon in the South East. By 630am, ISON will be at your SE at an altitude of 23 degrees, ENCKE at 121 degrees SSEast at an altitude of 13 degrees and should be quite visible. Mercury will below it and slightly to the left. Sun up will be roughly 40 min after this, around 7:20 am, but you may be able to see both comets better?

Hello again KiwiElf.....i've had a look at the weather forecast for the week ahead and guess what ? The only possible opportunity of seeing the comet/comets will be in the morning of the 13th just like you said in your post (another 'how cool is that' moment to add to the list ) :)

Thank you for taking the time to help me figure out where i need to be looking and when. It's been a really useful way of giving me the motivation i need to get up at silly o'clock and go have a look. I think the best place for me to go 'comet-watching' will be down on my local beach. As it was a nice sunny day today (sunday) for a change and as i only live a couple of minutes from the beach, i nipped down there on the ol' pushbike and took a few pictures to show you where i'll be looking.

The first picture is looking East with the city of Brighton in the distance and the following pictures are 'zoomed-in' views panning around towards the South East. I think if i'm going to see anything, it's going to be out over the sea in the area to the right of the cliffs that you can see in the last picture.

I wonder what the odds are of me seeing a comet on my first ever attempt at trying to see one.....astronomical i would think :pray:

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030385_zpsfeb08f52.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030385_zpsfeb08f52.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030386_zps71686323.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030386_zps71686323.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030387_zps1ec66ed6.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030387_zps1ec66ed6.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030388_zps34da97a1.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030388_zps34da97a1.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030389_zps3cc38b98.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030389_zps3cc38b98.jpg.html)

(Added bit : many thanks SilentFeathers and Panoptican for posting the comet-watching information.....much appreciated :thumb: )

[childs hood end]

whats the little white dot in the 4th photo... ?

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030388_zps34da97a1.jpg

[KiwiElf]

WOW - beautiful spot you live in Loveoneanother! (I'm surrounded by trees - almost a forest - beautiful, but they're a bit of an obstruction for low horizon viewing ;). Just hope I got the times and locations correct for you. Am realising that the notation on Redshift ("Local Time") is actually our local time grrrrrrr! So have done the maths by taking into account the time difference. (Normally the UK is 12 hrs behind us, plus we're on daylight saving now - fingers crossed ;))

(I would otherwise have to redo the settings for "Home" - hopefully other members may be able to verify my calcs!)

I too will be kicking myself out of bed around 5am our time as soon as the weather clears up. Hope it stays fine for you too!

[loveoneanother]

whats the little white dot in the 4th photo... ?


Good lord childs hood end how on earth did you manage to spot that.....even after you said there was something there it still took me a good few minutes to find it.....well done you :clap2:

Do you remember all the reports recently of people seeing a bright object in the sky to the south-west at sunset ? Thinking about the time i took those pictures (about 1.30pm), i think it's possibly the same object.....Venus (could easily be wrong about that though) :unsure:

Good video here highlighting what's up in the night sky for the week ahead including ISON :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SFS-3PzjZ8

[Sidney]

Hi, sorry if this has been posted already,, but have you guys seen this?? And whats your take??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAyHCfnjGVI

[sheme]

Weird stuff -is this for real or a simulation?

[sheme]

I am fascinated with (Castor Pollux) The Twins constellation and Jupiter in the east -Jupiter really shifting south now brightest thing in my sky.

Will the Ison comet appear to come from the (virgin) Virgo constellation? can anyone tell me?

[sheme]

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/ Ah here we go is this the origin of the virgin birth I wonder?

[Nick Matkin]

Video at #62 looks like a hoax don't you think?

The tail is moving in a way I've never seen in a comet video, and why doesn't the guy source it? Cos he just made it on his bedroom computer perhaps?

Given the distance the comet moved over the background star field, it must have been 'recorded' over a number of days. Therefore the 'object' must also have taken a number of days to reach the comet. And considering the number of amateur astronomers watching, they wouldn't have missed it.

Ah... they didn't miss it and this is why the video was leaked! Well it's not on any amateur astronomy websites and that's just the sort of thing they'd love to have grabbed and shown to the world.

Nick

[Sidney]

Video at #62 looks like a hoax don't you think?

The tail is moving in a way I've never seen in a comet video, and why doesn't the guy source it? Cos he just made it on his bedroom computer perhaps?

Given the distance the comet moved over the background star field, it must have been 'recorded' over a number of days. Therefore the 'object' must also have taken a number of days to reach the comet. And considering the number of amateur astronomers watching, they wouldn't have missed it.

Ah... they didn't miss it and this is why the video was leaked! Well it's not on any amateur astronomy websites and that's just the sort of thing they'd love to have grabbed and shown to the world.

Nick

I personally thought it kind of looked CG. But since I am not an expert in that area whatsoever I wanted to get others opinions. That said, I did see a couple other videos stating that right about the time that this (whatever it is suppose to be, collision) happened, the comets appearance did indeed change to have a multiple looking tail with brightening. With the date/time thing running, I though maybe there was a slim chance that it could be authentic.

[loveoneanother]

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/ Ah here we go is this the origin of the virgin birth I wonder?

Hello sheme.....thanks for the link :thumb:

I love it when people get excited about whatever it is they're into and Astrobob's excitement about what is coming up in the early morning sky has really got my juices flowing too. I can't wait to get out wednesday morning for my first ever look for a comet.....woohoo :whoo:

Along the way i've bookmarked a couple of other astronomy blogs that i liked and here's someone else ramping up the excitement levels :

http://waitingforison.wordpress.com/updates-november-2013-1/

Both blogs are a good reminder to me to stop looking into the crystal-ball for 5 mins, trying to see what the future holds and get some enjoyment from living in the here and now :)

(added bit : Nick.....thanks for the post replying to Sidney about the video.....much appreciated :angel: )

[SilentFeathers]

From space weather....

COMET ISON SPROUTS A DOUBLE TAIL: Amateur astronomers are getting a better look at Comet ISON as it dives toward the sun for a Nov. 28th close encounter with solar fire. As the heat rises, the comet brightens, revealing new details every day. This photo, taken Nov. 10th by Michael Jäger of Jauerling Austria, shows a beautiful double tail:
http://spaceweather.com/images2013/11nov13/double_strip.jpg

[McMaster]

I think we might be up for a show with this ISON fella.
When it get's closer and closer to the equatorial plane of the solar system, that's when it will start to act up, flare dramatically in brigthness, and maybe even break in to fracments.
In the equatorial plane the electric current of the solar system is strongest and will dramatically affect ISON.

[Hervé]

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/Images/2012s1_20131012_mm1b.jpgFrom: Southern Comets Homepage (http://members.westnet.com.au/mmatti/sc.htm)
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/Images/2012s1_20131012_mm1b.jpg


http://members.westnet.com.au/mmatti/Images/2012s1_20131012_mm1b.jpg


C/2012 S1 ISON and Mars, 2013 Oct 12.78UT

Canon 60Da and 300mm EF zoom lens cropped. 5x30sec exposures.



http://projectavalon.net/forum4/Images/2013r1_20131012_mm1b.jpgWill comet ISON survive Perihelion on the morning of November 29, Australian time, when only 2 million kms from the Sun?

That is the big question that has raised much discussion in the astronomical forums.

See latest light curve and information at: http://astronomia.udea.edu.co/cometspage/#figura4

At discovery in September 2012, ISON's brightness at the time suggested it would become the Great Northern Comet of December 2013.

By February 2013, ISON had other ideas, when activity virtually came to a standstill. This activity far out from the Sun was driven by highly volatile gas such as CO2, which eventually depleted. This is typical behaviour of dynamically new comets that have never been exposed to Sunlight before. ISON's brightness since then was more representative of a reflecting body.

This behaviour makes ISON a high risk for disintegration and becoming the fizzle of the century.

The size and density of the nucleus is critical for survival prospects, and it is estimated to be about 1-5kms.

If the comet survives, the northern hemisphere will be treated to a nice view in December.

The comet should sport a bright long tail, similar in appearance to comet Lovejoy in December 2011.

Unfortunately, Southern hemisphere viewing will be restricted to the first few weeks of November. It will be completely unobservable after perihelion.

On the morning of Nov 1, the magnitude 8 comet will be situated in Leo, only 8 degrees above the horizon at start of astronomical twilight at 35S latitude. It is a degree south of Beta Virginis on the morning of the 8th, and a degree to the north of Spica in Virgo on the morning of the 18th. By then comet ISON could be at magnitude 5. Observations now start to get really difficult, if not already, as the comet is swallowed up by twilight.

It will probably be better now to watch the show on the SOHO and STEREO websites.

Also, keep up to date with the CIOC website on: http://www.isoncampaign.org/

There may be a rare opportunity for daylight observing at perihelion on the morning of the 29th, but this will be restricted to experienced observers.

You are better off watching it online.

[loveoneanother]

Hello fellow comet-watchers :grouphug:

Just dropping this post on to the thread to let you know i managed to wake myself up and i'm getting ready to launch myself out into the early morning darkness.

It's currently 4.30am UK time and i've been out into the garden for a quick look up at the night sky and it looks amazing. It's as clear as it's ever going to get here and there are stars everywhere. (Looking for a needle in a haystack springs to mind !)

All the well known bits like Orion, Jupiter and the Big Dipper (or the giant soup ladle as i like to call it) are easy to see from the house so it's time to get down the beach where it's a bit darker and do some squinting. ISON, ENCKE, LOVEJOY.....any one will do !

I've got my crude drawings of where the nearest constellations are to the comets and with a fair wind and a healthy dollop of good luck hopefully i'll see something. I'll post again later when i've got time and let you know how i got on :)

(Here's a pretty good image of what it looks like out there.....eek ! ) :

http://theskylive.com/ison-tracker

[loveoneanother]

Hey folks.....just to finish off the story from the above post about my first ever comet-watching experience :rolleyes:

I looked and i looked and i looked some more and i don't think it will come as any surprise to the seasoned sky-watcher but i didn't see any comets. It soon become apparent i was hopelessly ill-prepared to see anything remotely comet-like using just the naked-eye. The whole experience gave me a new found understanding as to why it is whenever you see pictures of comet-watching groups gathered under the night sky they've all got toys like telescopes and binoculars etc about their person. To me, these items are an absolute must have if you're serious about seeing these faint and distant objects !

There was one moment when i was concentrating really hard in an area to the right of Virgo when i thought i saw something wink at me but dismissed it as being the result of wishful thinking and an overactive imagination. Interestingly though, when i got back home, i read a few reports that were saying ISON had been showing signs of 'outbursting' and for a brief moment i thought maybe just maybe that was the 'winking' i saw :confused:

I got a bit philosophical at one point, thinking back to our ancestors and how they used to use the stars for all kinds of things and how modern technology has now brought all these amazing things into our living-rooms. I didn't stay in a philosophical frame of mind for long though because it was bloomin' freezin' down on the beach and once the light of the rising sun started filling the early morning sky, i was more than ready to get on my pushbike and try and cycle some heat back into my cold bones.

Astronomers everywhere i salute you.....it takes a certain sort of person to want to do that every night :yo:


Timelapse of Comet ISON and Comet Lovejoy



http://vimeo.com/79188919



Comet 2012 S1 (ISON) is just 16 days away from its close encounter with the Sun and is now inside the orbit of Venus, at under 103,000,000 km (64,000,000 miles) away from the Sun. This new timelapse by award-winning photographer Justin Ng from Singapore shows the journey of both ISON and Comet 2013 R1 (Lovejoy), taken on November 11, 2013. The video covers 50 minutes of imaging time for ISON and 90 minutes of imaging time for Lovejoy.

As you watch the video of each, don’t worry – the comets and their tails are not fizzling out! This actually reflects the reduced visibility of the comets as the sky was gradually becoming brighter with daybreak. Additionally, Justin cautions that in the timelapse, both comets appear to be moving especially fast because of smaller field of view and long exposure.

On November 4, there were indications of a possible ion tail emerging from Comet ISON, and this comet’s growing dust tail now stretches to more than a full moon’s diameter. “Comet ISON is now plunging towards the Sun with 2 long tails at a magnitude of around +7 and it is visible in small scopes and strong binoculars,” writes Justin.

Comet ISON flies in front of constellation Virgo this week (from our vantage point on Earth) and it is expected to grow some 2.5 times brighter before it passes by the bright star Spica in Virgo on November 17 and 18.

“Comet Lovejoy just passed into the constellation Leo with a magnitude of around +6 and it’s an easy binocular object,” said Justin. “R1 Lovejoy will remain well placed at 50 to 60 degrees above the northeastern horizon before sunrise through this week for observers from near the Equator.”

http://www.universetoday.com/106355/new-timelapse-of-comets-ison-and-lovejoy/

[Wind]

Ison is brightening, images from Bruce Gary's site (http://www.brucegary.net/ISON/#Observations_by_Date_).

iJUpp4I27jY

http://oi44.tinypic.com/300w26h.jpg
http://oi43.tinypic.com/35izvqb.jpg
"This animation consists of 7 images, each a 3-image median combine stack, all with a r' filter, from 11:43 to 12:53 UT, Nov 14, made by Bruce Gary using a Celestron 11-inch telescope. Filamentary structure can be seen moving away from the sun at high speed. The motion of jets that can be seen first on the side is backwards and toward the center of the tail; this must be cause by the pattern of solar wind enveloping the coma and coming back together on the back side (just my amateur speculation). The presence of many jet-like structures in the outer coma and tail show that there are many sources for gas-driven dust on the nucleus surface. (The coma isn't changing size; it just appears that way due to the contrast/brightness adjustments that were needed to keep the tail looking the same.)

Nov 14, 12.2 UT: Comet is definitely in "outburst"! It should be naked eye visible NOW! 15.6 UT: Posted color images. 18.5 UT: Added Gary r'-band animation."

[sheme]

http://earthsky.org/tonight/years-best-morning-apparition-of-mercury-in-november-2013

I hope to witness the virgin birth in the next few nights/hours as Ison passes through constellation Virgo, I only have Binoculars so here's hopeing.

[Hervé]

Comet ISON in outburst! Brightens a magnitude or more overnight (http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/11/14/comet-ison-in-outburst-brightens-a-magnitude-or-more/)

Posted on November 14, 2013 (http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/11/14/comet-ison-in-outburst-brightens-a-magnitude-or-more/)


http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-panel-JuanjoS.jpg (http://bit.ly/1asb5yT)
Just look at how quickly Comet ISON is evolving. Top row (left): on Nov. 3 and 9 (right) it showed a single, prominent dust tail. By Nov. 12 (lower right) it had grown a sharp, narrow gas tail, and on Nov. 14, a multiple tail with streamers. Click to enlarge. Credit: Juanjo Gonzalez


Wahoo! Looks like Comet ISON is finally rubbing the sleep from its eyes. In the past 24 hours the comet has brightened significantly, rising from magnitude 7.5-80 (visible faintly in binoculars) all the way up to 6, the naked eye limit. That means that despite its rapidly dropping altitude and the moon returning to the morning sky, it should become easier to see.


http://www.mikesastrophotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/20131114-ISON-RGB-60-SEC-D.jpg

Comet ISON shows a bright, dense coma (the bulbous green head) and multiple tail streamers this morning in this photo taken by Mike Hankey of Monkton, Maryland. Click to enlarge


Amateur astronomers report that ISON’s head or coma has become more compact and condensed; the tail has evolved from a single plume-like streak to a complicated tangle of picturesque streamers. Astronomer Emmauel Jehin, a member of the European TRAPPIST (http://www.ati.ulg.ac.be/TRAPPIST/Trappist_main/Home.html) (TRAnsiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope) team, shares two pieces of good news. His observations with the group’s 23.6-inch (60-cm) telescope have detected a tenfold increase in dust blasting from the comet’s nucleus as well as additional jet of icy and dust in the past 48 hours. No question about it, an outburst is underway.


http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-map-early-Nov-at-dawn-general1.jpg

The comet is sliding down through the constellation Virgo low in the southeastern sky this week. To find it, face southeast starting about 1 3/4 to 2 hours before sunrise. Use Mars to point you toward Virgo and then drop down toward Virgo’s brightest star Spica. Use the map below to see ISON’s location in more detail now through the weekend. Stellarium


Peering deep into ISON’s coma, Jehin noted that the innermost nuclear region (the small, bright, fuzzy center of the comet) is still intact with no signs of a breakup. So far, so good. ISON’s holding together nicely on its inbound journey. If it keeps it up, we may see a fine comet indeed after perihelion on Nov. 28.

Funny thing – I was out watching ISON on Tuesday with students in my community ed astronomy class at the beginning of the outburst. While the coma’s core glowed brighter compared to a couple days earlier the full effects of the transition had only begun.


http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-path-Nov-10-to-191.jpg
Tighter view showing the comet at dawn’s start (CST) through Nov. 19. On the 18th it will sit right next to Spica. Created with Chris Marriott’s SkyMap program


It should come as no surprise that ISON’s leaping to life. Today it’s just under 60 million miles from the sun. The closer the comet gets, the more intense solar heating becomes. Heat vaporizes the comet’s dust-laden ice, and sunlight blows the material back to form a tail.

The sudden brightness jump could very well be from new cracks or fissures developing in icy crust. Exposed to the sun’s heat for the first time, gobs of ice rapidly vaporize and can cause the coma to brighten dramatically.

[seleka]

I am interested in skywatching, but no equipment. Plus we have been under pretty constant cloud(?) cover for a while now. Here is a short amateur vid from this date

gvvDYZ_RZjw

[seleka]

I like the calm music and cool graphics of this. This information is easier for me to assimilate in these spoonfed videos, maybe someone else will like it too.

Mt2kRT-JrGc

[panopticon]

Just so it's listed, here's the SDO satellite site link for the live ISON passage:

http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov

It won't have any pictures there til the 28th (17:30 UTC - 20:45 UTC) just thought putting it here was relevant.

-- Pan

[loveoneanother]

I'm tempted to use some sort of corny comet-like analogy to say this thread is 'warming up' nicely as ISON gets closer to the Sun but i better not eh ! What i do want to say though is a big thank you to all my fellow Avalonians who are posting on to the thread and who are helping to keep it relevant, topical and interesting.....thanks folks.....i definitely can't do it without you :grouphug:

I've just been watching the latest Hubble Hangout where the main topic of discussion was the recently observed 'six-tailed' asteroid but there are references along the way to ISON with the main talking point about it being around the 40.00 minute mark. If you're also interested in how the scientific process behind the observations works, it's well worth a listen too.

Thanks again everyone.....i'm happy to be sharing my first ever comet-watching experience with you :)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGgRNWUFfZ0

(Added bit : Has anyone on this thread seen any of the comets yet ? )

[sheme]

I was up at 5 am ish this morning and in the night early hours with my binoculars, half asleep I searched for some stars to work out where to start looking for Ison and caught a ufo dot traversing the sky from SE to E it was going real fast and not flashing it just looked like a distant star that got up and decided to leave. I fell back into bed then satisfied with my find and fell asleep.

[thunder24]

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/12nov13/orbits_strip.gif


In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


is this the demarcation in space of a time/event relating back to Kingu and Tiamat?

[panopticon]

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


Yeah, it's very cool the way they've taken some of the observed fireballs in the sky and their trajectories and put them in one picture:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/15nov13/orbits_strip.gif

-- Pan

[Redstar Kachina]

..........

[loveoneanother]

Latest blog from the Comet ISON Observing Campaign :

Comet ISON Enters the Final Countdown
(by Karl Battams Fri.15th Nov. 2013)

We’re now less than two weeks away from comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) reaching perihelion and, if we’re honest, we are still none the wiser as to how the situation might play out!

Last week, the CIOC’s Matthew Knight wrote an excellent blog post detailing the three possible outcomes for ISON in the coming days: imminent disintegration, disintegration at perihelion, or survival. Since he wrote that, and indeed in just the past 24-hours or so, comet ISON has undergone a dramatic shift in nature, with a brightness increase of at least an order or two of magnitude, and soaring rates of dust and gas being released from its nucleus. In light of this new development, we can now say with absolute certainty that comet ISON will definitely do one of those things that Matthew said it might do…

OK, that was vague. But the truth is, although this new development is tremendously exciting, it still doesn’t help us answer either of the questions that everyone wants to know: namely, how bright will comet ISON be, and will it survive perihelion?

The problem is that we don’t yet know why ISON has so suddenly and dramatically changed in brightness and production rates.

It could simply be that ISON has realized it’s a near-Sun comet (soon to be a sungrazer) and is beginning to “turn on” accordingly. After all, if it is to reach the lofty brightness goal of magnitude -3 to -5 that we long predicted (OK, guessed) that it might, then it has a lot of work to do in the next two weeks! This is actually a very likely scenario, and if true means that the first of Matthew’s scenarios – imminent disintegration – will not be the case.

But this requires the comet’s nucleus to remain in tact, and this brings us nicely to the second possibility: comet ISON’s nucleus has fragmented. We always said this could happen, and it perhaps has. If so, it will still be several days before we know for sure. When comet nuclei fall apart, it’s not like a shrapnel-laden explosion; the chunks simply drift apart from one-another at slightly different speeds. Given that ISON’s nucleus is shrouded in such a tremendous volume of light-scattering dust and gas right now, it will be almost impossible to determine this for at least a few days and perhaps not until the comet reaches the field of view of the NASA STEREO HI-1A instrument on November 21, 2013. We will have to wait for the chunks to drift apart a sufficient distance, assuming they don't crumble first.

If ISON’s nucleus has fragmented, the chances of any substantial chunk of nucleus surviving the extreme close brush with the Sun on November 28 are really quite small – but still not impossible. And even if ISON’s nucleus does fall apart completely, Matthew painted us a promising picture in his second scenario with a comet that still graces our December night skies with an extensive and beautiful tail.

So even in the face of adversity and the unknown, there is still hope that we will see a vivid naked-eye comet in the night skies in Northern Hemisphere. And even if not, we have already obtained unprecedented scientific knowledge of this comet with data from ten different spacecraft to date, and a vast wealth of ground-based observations from professional and amateur astronomers. In this sense, cometary science has already won. It just remains to be seen how big that win will be.

Follow us on the CIOC website through perihelion week as Matthew and I will be feverishly working, analyzing, blogging and tweeting as much as possible from atop Kitt Peak in Arizona.

http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/ison-final-countdown

[loveoneanother]

Can't wait to see what other images Messenger gets as both ISON and ENCKE whizz past MERCURY :)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Wzlu5quTU

[marlowe]

the latest from BP Earthwatch...he is saying ISON is 5 times larger than Earth...Can that be correct ?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcVSKnM9hH0

[Hervé]

From Spaceweather.com (http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=16&month=11&year=2013):

COMET ISON UPDATE: (http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=16&month=11&year=2013) Reports of naked-eye sightings of Comet ISON are coming in from around the world. Experienced observers put the comet's magntitude at +5.5 on Nov. 16th. This means it is now fully 10 times brighter than it was only three days ago before the outburst. To the naked eye, ISON appears as a faint smudge of pale green light low in the pre-dawn sky. The view through a telescope (http://www.explorescientific.com/davidlevycomethunter) is more dramatic. The comet's tail has become a riotous crowd of gaseous streamers stretching more than 3.5 degrees across the sky. Amateur astronomer Waldemar Skorupa sends this picture from Kahler Asten, Germany:


http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/16nov13/tail_strip.jpg (http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=89753)



The tail is so long, he couldn't fit the whole thing in the field of view. How long is it? Comet ISON's tail extends more than 8 million kilometers behind the comet's nucleus. For comparison, that's 21 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Because so much gas and dust is spewing from the comet's core, it is impossible to see clearly what caused Comet ISON's outburst on Nov. 13-14. One possibility is that fresh veins of ice are opening up in the comet's nucleus, vaporizing furiously as ISON approaches the sun. Another possibility is that the nucleus has completely fragmented.



"If so, it will still be several days before we know for sure," says Karl Battams, an astronomer with NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign. "When comet nuclei fall apart, it’s not like a shrapnel-laden explosion. Instead, the chunks slowly drift apart at slightly different speeds. Given that ISON’s nucleus is shrouded in such a tremendous volume of light-scattering dust and gas right now, it will be almost impossible to determine this for at least a few days and perhaps not until the comet reaches the field of view of NASA's STEREO HI-1A instrument on November 21, 2013. We will have to wait for the chunks to drift apart a sufficient distance, assuming they don't crumble first."



In short, no one knows for sure what is happening (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/14nov_whatsnext/) to Comet ISON. This could be the comet's death throes--or just the first of many brightening events the comet experiences as it plunges toward the sun for a close encounter on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 28th).


Monitoring is encouraged. Comet ISON rises in the east just before the sun. Amateur astronomers, if you have a GOTO telescope, enter these coordinates (http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/returnprepeph.cgi?d=c&o=CK12S010). Dates of special interest include Nov. 17th and 18th when the comet will pass the bright star Spica, making ISON extra-easy to find. Sky maps: Nov. 15 (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/15nov13/skymap.gif?PHPSESSID=qqts8v1d70n3b0sjt4mrvvprc3&PHPSESSID=fva3u5c2i5imd1urtsg42b2t13), 16 (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/16nov13/skymap.gif?PHPSESSID=qqts8v1d70n3b0sjt4mrvvprc3&PHPSESSID=fva3u5c2i5imd1urtsg42b2t13), 17 (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/17nov13/skymap.gif?PHPSESSID=qqts8v1d70n3b0sjt4mrvvprc3&PHPSESSID=fva3u5c2i5imd1urtsg42b2t13), 18 (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/18nov13/skymap.gif?PHPSESSID=qqts8v1d70n3b0sjt4mrvvprc3&PHPSESSID=fva3u5c2i5imd1urtsg42b2t13), 19 (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/19nov13/skymap.gif?PHPSESSID=qqts8v1d70n3b0sjt4mrvvprc3&PHPSESSID=fva3u5c2i5imd1urtsg42b2t13).



http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a910e105e07f9070866adaae10b.r15.cf1.rackcdn.com/waldemar-skorupa-ISON_2013-11-16T05h09m_3x180s_1x120RGB_skorupa_1384606267.jpg

[loveoneanother]

the latest from BP Earthwatch...he is saying ISON is 5 times larger than Earth...Can that be correct ?


Hello marlowe.....thanks for the vid. and the question :thumb:

I'm no space scientist but i'll have a dash at giving you an answer. What i think BP Earthwatch is referring to is the size of the inner coma and not the size of ISON itself. There's a table of information on Bruce Gary's website that gives a number of statistics about the inner coma (that are way beyond my understanding i'm afraid :noidea: ) but there is one column in the table that might help answer your question.

Please click on the following link then scroll down the page to the table that has a load of dates in the left-hand column (currently this table is the 2nd 'box' down the page). If you look at the far right column, it shows the various changes in size that have happened to ISON's inner coma recently.

http://www.brucegary.net/ISON/

Hope this helps answer your question :)

(Added bit to Amzer Zo : Thanks for your continued contributions to the thread. I wanted to take this brief opportunity to add to our previous 'EARTH MOID' chat by saying i don't think your explanation of it was correct. I feel that if the EARTH MOID figure was based on ISON's inbound journey then the final figure would be known by now. The EARTH MOID figure however, continues to change and the current figure based on observations up to November 15th is 2,132,080 miles (or 0.0229365 AU).

My question still remains unanswered i'm afraid. What is the EARTH MOID figure a measurement of :confused:

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=ison&orb=1 )

[loveoneanother]

For those of you near a tv on SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23rd there will be an hour long documentary about Comet ISON on BBC TWO beginning at 21:15.

Programme details here :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k3881

[marlowe]

here is a 5 minute vid about the 10 comets that are coming through our solar system..:party:..

right NOW......:bump2:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_wmH8tV80Q

[seleka]

I just saw this VY_WLCjIbRM I recognize the guy's voice, and know that is not his channel, but drawing a blank on the name. there is a link to this site (http://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/hekla) in the comments. It is a beautiful shot of some star or the comet maybe? Oh, you have to be on at the right time... around 30 min ago (10:30 am PT) when I turned it on for first time, the sun was up high in the middle and there was a visible comet under it. I will turn it on even earlier tomorrow morn now that I know.... funny enough, I was looking for the link to put in another post when I stumbled on this page (http://prepareforchange.net/archives/5474) which is where it started this am.... so is this thread for strictly astronomical observances? I should check that first, but already typed all this now so here's hoping it is ok...

edit: the last link says "NASA has blacked out the public access to close up views of ISON" but I have read in many places that it is the most viewed comet. were there close up views that were available and have now been yanked since the nanny ufos showed up?

[loveoneanother]

.... so is this thread for strictly astronomical observances? I should check that first, but already typed all this now so here's hoping it is ok...


Hello karika.....thanks for the post :thumb:

Feel free to post whatever you think is relevant to the latest news about comet ISON. I'm not sure about the video but the 'livefromiceland.....webcams' link was a great find. Well done for spotting it in the comments section of the video, i'm definitely bookmarking that one! Could be interesting watching the pre-dawn sky from one of those webcams, especially if you've got cloudy skies where you live (like we have here in the south of England at the moment). I've got so many ISON bits bookmarked now, it's getting difficult to know which bit to look at first every day.

I think i'm at the stage now where i'm waiting to see what the big boys come up with using all their high-tech equipment. There's still some great images coming in from the amateur astronomers though and i particularly liked the simplicity of this one taken today (November 18th) by someone called 'jaker' in Moscow, Russia. It's the type of image i was hoping to see myself when i went out comet-watching last week :)

http://spaceweathergallery.com/full_image.php?image_name=jaker-comet1_1384794700.jpg

[SilentFeathers]

here is a 5 minute vid about the 10 comets that are coming through our solar system..:party:..

right NOW......:bump2:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_wmH8tV80Q

Anyone, is this information basically correct? If so, 10 or more comets in such a short period is rather quite rare.

I found info for 4 "visible comets, even 4 is really rare, perhaps something strange is happening?


November 14, 2013 — Is there a collective noun for comets? A single comet is a rare enough sight to have been regarded as an evil omen in ancient times. Our northern skies are graced with not one, but four comets this month. Comet C/2012 X1 (LINEAR) has recently brightened and spends most of this month in the constellation Boötes. Comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) is travelling across Leo while Comet 2P/Encke is crossing Virgo, which also houses the much anticipated Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON).
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/collective/2013/nov/14/comets-tale/

[Hervé]

here are 8 of them from http://members.westnet.com.au/mmatti/sc.htm:

Here you will find images, photos and finder charts of past, present and future comets visible from the southern hemisphere, plus other observations of interest.

This page was last updated on 14-Nov-2013

2013-14 COMET OBSERVING PLANNER can be downloaded here (http://members.westnet.com.au/mmatti/webpage/observable%20comets.xls). (updated July 2013)

Current Brightness of Present/Future comets visually observable from the Southern Hemisphere on November 13, 2013.

C/2013 R1 Lovejoy
6th magnitude and brightening. Brighter than expected and will reach magnitude 5 in December Northern Hemisphere skies

C/2012 S1 ISON
7th magnitude and brightening. low eastern morning sky.
Bright Northern comet in December 2013 if it survives perihelion!

2P Encke
7th magnitude and steady. Northern hemisphere object only.

C/2012 X1 LINEAR
8th magnitude and steady: Northern hemisphere only.
In outburst (similar appearance to 17P Holmes outburst in 2007)

C/2013 V3 Nevski
8th magnitude and brightening?: Eastern morning sky. Outburst!

C/2012 V2 LINEAR
10th magnitude and fading: South-eastern morning sky.
Much brighter than predicted

154P Brewington
11th magnitude and steady. Evening sky

C/2013 N4 Borisov
12th magnitude and fading. Eastern morning sky.

[loveoneanother]

Anyone, is this information basically correct? If so, 10 or more comets in such a short period is rather quite rare.


Hello SilentFeathers.....i remember reading the following a while back and didn't think too much of it at the time. I just thought i was so far behind in my comet learning that everyone else probably already knew how many comets there are in the solar system.

You can open the link to read the full article but here's the relevant bit if you don't fancy going back to comet school :)


How many comets are there ?

We don't know how many comets there are since most have never been seen. There could be one hundred billion in the Oort cloud. As of 2010, astronomers have discovered about 4,000 comets in our solar system.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=214

[seleka]

It is cloudy here all day long lately too... typical weather for the NW, but I really wanted to see it. I will go look for more webcams, that is a good idea for us. I still have that iceland (lol above when I read it I saw miceland) link up in another tab, waiting for the stars and sunrise... hmmm trying to figure out what the time difference is I am west coast US.... ok I got it now, it is midnight there I think right now... this site looks promising to find more sunrise cameras...http://rizeandset.com/ it took 3 minutes to load but has good collection....

[panopticon]

The Cometography (http://cometography.com/) website has a bit of information for those who are interested and quite a listing of periodic comet orbits:
http://cometography.com/periodic_comets.html

The video presented earlier was hilarious, cheers for the laugh.

-- Pan

[DeDukshyn]

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


Yeah, it's very cool the way they've taken some of the observed fireballs in the sky and their trajectories and put them in one picture:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/15nov13/orbits_strip.gif

-- Pan

When I see this picture, and think "why?", it would seem that their creation may have been caused by something large hitting the earth (or a planet that "was" there long ago - with earth being a remnant) and blasting off water and rock into orbits around the sun. With this in mind, elliptical orbits for many of these objects make a lot of sense. It's the only real explanation as to why they ALL line up at this exact spot in earth's orbit. Of course it looks "dangerous" but chances of anything hitting earth are still slim to none, due to all the long and varied timings of these orbits. But unless I am reading this graphics intention completely wrong and just don't see it, it is the only explanation that really works to describe this.

I am surprised I was the only one who thanked Thunder's post with his comment indicating the same thoughts ... We do have ancient texts that may point towards the description of this event even. That would also explain why comets have a fair bit of water, and it would also indicate that comets would have "earth"(Tiamat?) water and ancient "earth" remnants ...

But again, maybe I was misinterpreting what this graphic was actually indicating ... ??

[panopticon]

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


Yeah, it's very cool the way they've taken some of the observed fireballs in the sky and their trajectories and put them in one picture:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/15nov13/orbits_strip.gif

-- Pan

When I see this picture, and think "why?", it would seem that their creation may have been caused by something large hitting the earth (or a planet that "was" there long ago - with earth being a remnant) and blasting off water and rock into orbits around the sun. With this in mind, elliptical orbits for many of these objects make a lot of sense. It's the only real explanation as to why they ALL line up at this exact spot in earth's orbit. Of course it looks "dangerous" but chances of anything hitting earth are still slim to none, due to all the long and varied timings of these orbits. But unless I am reading this graphics intention completely wrong and just don't see it, it is the only explanation that really works to describe this.

I am surprised I was the only one who thanked Thunder's post with his comment indicating the same thoughts ... We do have ancient texts that may point towards the description of this event even. That would also explain why comets have a fair bit of water, and it would also indicate that comets would have "earth"(Tiamat?) water and ancient "earth" remnants ...

But again, maybe I was misinterpreting what this graphic was actually indicating ... ??

The graphic, as I understand it, is of fireball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Fireball) (a classification just down from and including bolide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolide) in brightness) producing objects that have been viewed from Earth.
The trajectories are then projected showing how many there are.

Given that it is of observed "fireballs", caused by objects "skimming" the Earth's atmosphere, they would naturally all appear to converge on Earth, otherwise they wouldn't be appearing in the image.

-- Pan

[DeDukshyn]

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]

http://www.spaceweather.com/


Yeah, it's very cool the way they've taken some of the observed fireballs in the sky and their trajectories and put them in one picture:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/15nov13/orbits_strip.gif

-- Pan

When I see this picture, and think "why?", it would seem that their creation may have been caused by something large hitting the earth (or a planet that "was" there long ago - with earth being a remnant) and blasting off water and rock into orbits around the sun. With this in mind, elliptical orbits for many of these objects make a lot of sense. It's the only real explanation as to why they ALL line up at this exact spot in earth's orbit. Of course it looks "dangerous" but chances of anything hitting earth are still slim to none, due to all the long and varied timings of these orbits. But unless I am reading this graphics intention completely wrong and just don't see it, it is the only explanation that really works to describe this.

I am surprised I was the only one who thanked Thunder's post with his comment indicating the same thoughts ... We do have ancient texts that may point towards the description of this event even. That would also explain why comets have a fair bit of water, and it would also indicate that comets would have "earth"(Tiamat?) water and ancient "earth" remnants ...

But again, maybe I was misinterpreting what this graphic was actually indicating ... ??

The graphic, as I understand it, is of fireball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Fireball) (a classification just down from and including bolide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolide) in brightness) producing objects that have been viewed from Earth.
The trajectories are then projected showing how many there are.

Given that it is of observed "fireballs", caused by objects "skimming" the Earth's atmosphere, they would naturally all appear to converge on Earth, otherwise they wouldn't be appearing in the image.

-- Pan

So all these have "struck" the earth or burned in it's atmosphere? I guess this is what is meant by "fireball?" -- Now my next question would be is the position of the earth in this graphic represented as relative or absolute. If it is relative (which it may be - never got any good description from the site), then disregard my interpretation of it. If it is absolute then that is weird and still supports the "collision" theory.

[panopticon]

So all these have "struck" the earth or burned in it's atmosphere? I guess this is what is meant by "fireball?" -- Now my next question would be is the position of the earth in this graphic represented as relative or absolute. If it is relative (which it may be - never got any good description from the site), then disregard my interpretation of it. If it is absolute then that is weird and still supports the "collision" theory.

Hey DeDukshyn,

The image shows orbits relative to the observation made from Earth.

The cameras observe the fireballs and the trajectories of the objects are projected from this:

http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov

Some of them break-up on impacting the atmosphere while others skip off:


The cameras have overlapping fields of view, which means that the same fireball can be detected by more than one camera. This allows us to calculate the height of the fireball and how fast it is going. We can even work out the orbit of the meteoroid responsible for creating the fireball, which gives us clues about whether it came from a comet or an asteroid. If the fireball is traveling slow enough, and makes it low enough, it is possible that it can survive to the ground as a meteorite.
Source (http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/)

It's all to projected possible dangers, to satellites and space missions at various times in the year, of space objects:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/meo/home/overview_detail-rd.html

As the Earth moves around the Sun there may be times when there are more dangers to space craft than others and I think that's what this aims to forecast.

As for whether the objects get trapped in Earth's gravitational field and this creates an orbit around Earth, I honestly don't think that's the case but maybe Amzer Zo, Nick or someone else might know more about it. I just don't think that there would be many that survive creating a fireball and have just enough speed to escape the Earth, only to get caught in an orbit around it...

Hope that's not as clear as mud. ;)

-- Pan

[DeDukshyn]

So all these have "struck" the earth or burned in it's atmosphere? I guess this is what is meant by "fireball?" -- Now my next question would be is the position of the earth in this graphic represented as relative or absolute. If it is relative (which it may be - never got any good description from the site), then disregard my interpretation of it. If it is absolute then that is weird and still supports the "collision" theory.

Hey DeDukshyn,

The image shows orbits relative to the observation made from Earth.

...

Hope that's not as clear as mud. ;)

-- Pan

So then the fact that it displays earth at a single certain orbit around the sun during all the "intercepts" is actually false and misleading? ;) Sorry I always include "time" as dimension to naturally think in when considering everything - so maybe it's just that messing with me when I suppose I shouldn't always be considering "time". It actual is a strong suit of mine - which leaves me confused at times, but also makes me an incredible "DeDuctor" at others ;) Might have messed me up this time ;)

[panopticon]

So then the fact that it displays earth at a single certain orbit around the sun during all the "intercepts" is actually false and misleading?

Sorry, I was a bit distracted earlier.

If you look at the image all the objects orbit the Sun and only cross the Earth's orbit when the Earth moves through theirs (which is where they are observed as fireballs, recorded by NASA and their previous orbit calculated).

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/15nov13/orbits_strip.gif

Most would break-up on contact with the Earth's "fly swat" (atmosphere) and either disintegrate or fragment so only little pieces hit the surface. Some skip off and continue on their merry way.

So, I would say it is a bit misleading if not taken in context.

As I understand it the images says:


Hey guys, over the last 24 hours there were so many bloody fireballs that skimmed us. Pesky little bastards (where's my fly swat) and here's where they came from!

-- Pan

[mojo]

It's intriguing that all the comets coming in...

f_wmH8tV80Q

[panopticon]

An excellent resource is the Minor Planet Center (http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/) and the information available is phenomenal:

http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Lists.html

Try the 'Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/CloseApp.html)' page for an indication of how often the Earth gets "buzzed".

It's a great site to dig around on, if you're that way inclined.

The latest comet discovered (that I know of) is C/2013 US10 (Catalina) (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2013+US10;orb=1) and expected to be closest to Earth around 17th January 2015 (about 0.71 AU).

It's of no danger to Earth and will probably only be observable with a telescope.

-- Pan

[seleka]

hey I think I see brightening! I see a red dot in the sky, anyone else? http://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/hekla/

edit: I kept checking... and still dark, so I looked up the time for sunrise... lol it isn't until 10:10 UTC... 3 hours from now... unless I am reading it wrong http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=211

[kirolak]

I hope this is not duplicating anything, but what does everyone make of this; it does look like an eagle on the video. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYd7byfx_4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[seleka]

well this looks exciting! she says understatedly... :eek: http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/supercomet-ison/videos/supercomet-ison-on-science.htm The music is from The Walking Dead?!

[loveoneanother]

I hope this is not duplicating anything, but what does everyone make of this; it does look like an eagle on the video. . .


Hello kirolak.....thanks for the post :thumb:

I saw that story about the 'wings' when it came out. There was a Facebook page started which said that some recognised scientists had seen this phenomena but the Facebook page has disappeared now. The story caught the attention of the team at the CIOC (Comet ISON Observing Campaign) purely because of the connection to these recognised scientists and they posted a couple of blogs about it. Here's an extract from the latest blog which you might find interesting. To read the full blog please click on the CIOC link at the end of the extract :

Comet ISON Current Status
Latest Update : November 19th 2013

Yesterday we discussed, among other things, whether or not comet ISON had fragmented. This story caught the attention of lots of media and news outlets, so several of us have had a busy day or so responding to queries. The takeaway message from yesterday was simply that "we don't know... but we suspect it's still in one piece. Today we still don't know if the comet is in one piece, but the evidence is implying that it is.

Comet ISON is getting difficult to observe: it's low to the horizon in brightening skies, and a full moon is certainly not helping. But images are still coming in, and in shots like this one from Indonesia last night, the comet's nucleus still looks nicely condensed and symmetrical.

There had been reports of "coma wings" in processed images of the comet, and these are a feature that has been associated with fragmentation of comet nuclei. We blogged about this yesterday with the main conclusion being that yes it certainly could mean fragmentation, but also could mean one of several other things that have nothing to do with fragmentation. Thus we urged continued imaging and community-wide discussion of this feature. Overnight we have heard that those "coma wing" features appear to have faded. Does this mean ISON has definitely not fragmented? No, but it lends weight to the belief that it's still in one piece.

Again we emphasize here that we applaud the group for publicly making those statements and distributing the observations. This is how the best science happens, when we share, discuss, cooperate and coordinate! We encourage all other observing groups to take the same approach with their data and keep the discussion rolling. And speaking of which...

This is the most exciting news of the day: the scientists using the European Southern Observatory's TRAPPIST telescope are this morning reporting that comet ISON is again in outburst! Overnight they have seen a six-times increase in production rates (gases, water). This is not as large as the outburst last week that saw a ten-or-more-fold increase in production, but this is still a very significant outburst. They note that they are just about at the end of their observing run but will continue to follow up as much as they can. Both those scientists and indeed the CIOC are urging observers to try and image the comet when at all possible. We really are down to the wire with pre-perihelion observations!

Finally, Matthew has updated our light-curve today, which you can see above. The post-outburst observations are very evident but note that there are no new observations that include the second outburst we just detailed above. It will be a day or so before that information comes in. Furthermore, data points are going to be scarce now for all the reasons we just highlighted about how difficult ISON is becoming to observe. We are almost in the domain of the solar spacecraft only...

So for those short on time, today's tl;dr is that ISON still appears to be in one piece, but is undergoing a new outburst right now. Observing conditions are becoming extremely difficult, and very few pre-perihelion days remain for useful ground-based observations.

http://www.isoncampaign.org/Present


It is cloudy here all day long lately too... typical weather for the NW, but I really wanted to see it. I will go look for more webcams, that is a good idea for us. I still have that iceland (lol above when I read it I saw miceland) link up in another tab, waiting for the stars and sunrise... hmmm trying to figure out what the time difference is I am west coast US.... ok I got it now, it is midnight there I think right now... this site looks promising to find more sunrise cameras...http://rizeandset.com/ it took 3 minutes to load but has good collection....

Hello again karika.....thanks for entering into the spirit of the thread.....you're finding some interesting stuff that's for sure (you made me laugh with the 'miceland' bit above.....hehehe.....classic :) )

How did you get on with the Iceland webcams ? Did you manage to work out which webcam to look at ? I had a quick look this morning (admittedly while it was still a bit dark there) and couldn't figure out which one would be best to see the sunrise ? I think by the time i figure it out, ISON will have been around the Sun and on its way out. I haven't had the chance yet to look at the 'rizeandset' link you provided (which i'm going to do when i finish posting this) but if you find any webcams in the next few days or so that are pointing in the right direction please let me know.

Thanks again karika.....your contributions are much appreciated :)

[DeDukshyn]

Hey guys, over the last 24 hours there were so many bloody fireballs that skimmed us. Pesky little bastards (where's my fly swat) and here's where they came from!

-- Pan

Ok, it's not misleading in the way I thought - what you quoted at the end cleared that up. All these bodies were indeed in this exact orbit, and they all indeed had orbits that intersected Earth's at the exact same spot - not only that, they all intersected earths orbit within a single 24 hour period, the chances of this happening considering space is 3 dimensional and considering they all "happened" to intersect at the exact same time (24 hours is a tiny window compared with orbital times). Statistically, to make this "not" relevant to something, space would have to be almost be solid with orbiting bodies ... I assume there is far more stuff out there than is normally ever considered,.. but still, this is fascinating -- statistically speaking.

Thanks for finally indicating to me the "24hr" thing - it actually made this even more interesting ;) I was thinking something slightly different.

[panopticon]

Thanks for finally indicating to me the "24hr" thing - it actually made this even more interesting ;) I was thinking something slightly different.

If you thought the previous image was impressive here's the image for November 19th:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/19nov13/orbits_strip.gif

The Earth is moving through the annual Leonid meteor shower so there's lots of shooting stars at the moment.

-- Pan

Just to add, the different colours represent the velocity of the object:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/14oct13/colors.gif

Source (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/14oct13/colors.gif)

[loveoneanother]

With the recent posts about ISON and it's 'wings' still fresh in my mind, i was just doing my morning round-up of all things ISON and thought the following was worth posting on the thread. Another great image me thinks with a reasonable enough explanation as to what's occurring :)

http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/aktuelles/pressenotizen/pressenotizen_2013/pressenotiz_20131119_1_vga.jpg


Press Release 19/2013 - November 23, 2013
Comet ISON unfolds its wings

New images of ISON indicate that the comet lost individual fragments in the past days.

One or more fragments may have detached from comet ISON in the past days, as two wing-shaped features in the comet's atmosphere suggest. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and the Wendelstein Observatory of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (Germany) discovered these features in images taken at the end of last week. The fragmentation may offer an explanation for the comet's recent outburst of activity.
On its journey towards the Sun, comet ISON has disappointed many hobby astronomers in the past weeks: its brightness did not increase as strongly as previously assumed. On November 28th, 2013 the comet will fly by the Sun in a distance of only 1.8 million kilometers. However, on November 7th, ISON's light intensity increased abruptly; several observers announced a sudden rise in the comet's activity.

Images of ISON taken by scientists from the MPS and the Wendelstein Observatory now offer possible evidence for the cause of this outburst. On November 14th and 16th, 2013 the researchers aimed their telescope towards the approaching visitor.

The researchers' analyses show two striking features within the comet's atmosphere that protrude from the nucleus in a wing-like fashion. While these so-called coma wings were still rather faint on November 14th, they dominate the images taken two days later. "Features like these typically occur after individual fragments break off the nucleus", Dr. Hermann Böhnhardt from the MPS explains.
As does the nucleus, these fragments emit gas and dust. Where the emissions from the comet and its fragments meet, a kind of boundary layer is formed that often takes a wing-like form as seen from Earth. Whether or not this fragmentation process led to the recent outburst cannot be determined with certainty, says Bönhardt. However, in the cases of other comets, a connection between both phenomena has been well established.

In the images taken of comet ISON, the coma wings cannot be seen with the naked eye. Instead, numerical methods were necessary to make them visible. To this end the researchers comb through the comet's coma looking for spatial changes in the light intensity. The uniformly bright background of the comet's atmosphere is numerically eliminated so as not to outshine the fainter structures hidden beneath. "Our calculations imply that ISON lost only one fragment or very few at the most", says Böhnhardt.

How the comet will develop in the next weeks is still unclear. "However, according to past experience, comets that have once lost a fragment tend to do this again", says Böhnhardt.

http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/aktuelles/pressenotizen/pressenotiz_20131119.html

[araucaria]

On the 'comet city' notion, I think it would be a mistake to see these many different arrivals as being long-term coincidence, as opposed to being the result of a single large-scale event, namely the solar system's arrival in a cloud of interstellar material, which would have the effect of pushing all kinds of miscellaneous rocks inwards.

Hence the idea of an orbit of x thousand years does not mean a comet was here x (2x, 3x...) thousand years ago; more likely, it has just been shifted for the first time out of a 'parking orbit' in the Oort cloud, presumably after a collision from material in this new extrasolar cloud.

[McMaster]

I think everybody should try to remeber, that Oort cloud is purely hypothetical and not backed by any single visual or any other kind of observation. Only reason Oort cloud have been made up
is that scientist can't explain/think any other way for the long period comets to excist.
Same applies to everything we "know". Black holes, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, none of those are supported by any observation. They have all come to excist from theoretical physicists mathematical equations to fix something on their equations that doesn't work when something new is discovered.
Yes, the math works, ofcourse, because it is made to fit the observation, but other than that, we know squat.

[Hervé]

[...]... scientist can't explain/think any other way for the long period comets to excist.
Same applies to everything we "know". Black holes, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, none of those are supported by any observation.

[...]

Well, at least, long-period comets do exist AND have been observed... meaning... it cannot be the same applying... :)

Now back to Ison:


http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-jet-Denis-Nov17.jpg

Processed images showing a possible jet extending southeast (PA 150 degrees) of Comet ISON’s nucleus as well as the new wing-like hoods on Nov. 17, 2013. The wings are dust from the nucleus pushed back toward the tail by the pressure of sunlight. Credit: Denis Buczynski and Nick James of the BAA

From: http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/11/18/comet-ison-fades-a-smidge-but-sit-tight-the-funs-about-to-begin/

[McMaster]

Yes, long period comets do excist, no doubt about that. :)
I'm just not so sure about the Oort cloud.

[araucaria]

Yes, long period comets do excist, no doubt about that. :)
I'm just not so sure about the Oort cloud.
Cloud is a misnomer for a hypothetical spherical fairly local position for comets, average distance 40,000 AU from the Sun. According to Van Flandern, this huge space 'by calculation, contains 10,000,000,000 comets with an average separation of 2,000,000,000 km between each.

For Van Flandern, the conventional Oort cloud theory is absurd, but the idea makes sense in his theory of comets originating from planetary breakup. His main prediction is that

An adequate modelling of stellar perturbations will show that all new comet orbits intersected at a common point in the inner solar system 3 million years ago. (Dark Matter, Missing Planets… p.192) It could be that we have hit a harmonic of that 3 million year period, whereby a whole subgroup of these comets are coming to perihelion at around the same time.

[loveoneanother]

I think we've just about squeezed the last out of what's possible from the amateur astronomers before the pros take over the show. Good article here though from the folks at Sky & Telescope giving the hope of one final glimpse of ISON for those in blessed locations. There's also a couple of short 'Comet Animations' in the article which you can view by clicking on the Sky & Telescope link at the end of the post :)

Comet ISON Brightening Fast as its Moment of Truth Nears

A Sky & Telescope Press Release

by The Editors of Sky & Telescope

November 20th 2013

http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/ISON_Nov15_Damian-Peach_Hi-Res.jpg


Comet ISON, imaged by longtime amateur astrophotograper Damian Peach in the U.K. He used a 4-inch f/5 telescope for 12 minutes of combined exposures on November 15th.
Damian Peach / SkyandTelescope.com

Comet ISON, anticipated by skywatchers for more than a year, is brightening fast just days from its fateful hairpin swing on November 28th around the broiling surface of the Sun. The comet is now a greenish-white fuzzy "star" in binoculars, low in the east-southeast at the beginning of dawn. Telescopic photos are showing it with a long, ribbony tail. The comet has flared with unexpected outbursts of gas and dust three times already this month.

What will emerge from its solar encounter into the dawns of early December?

"We might witness a nice, long-tailed comet visible to the naked eye that will leave millions of people with fond memories for a lifetime," says Alan MacRobert, a senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. "Or maybe it will be a small comet for sky hunters using binoculars and a good map of its position. Or it might yet break up and vanish."

It all depends on what happens to the comet's tiny nucleus, its only solid part. A comet's nucleus is a dirty iceball that's just a pinpoint by astronomical standards — in this case less than a mile or two across. As it flies in from the cold outer solar system and warms in the heat of the Sun, some of its ice evaporates, releasing gas and dust that expands by thousands or even millions of miles to become the comet's glowing head ("coma") and tail.

ISON will pass closest to the Sun's surface — by less than one Sun diameter! — for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day, November 28th. (Closest time: around 2 p.m. EST; 19:00 Universal Time [GMT].) The Sun will be enormous from the comet's point of view, filling the comet's sky and broiling its surface to a temperature of about 2,700 degrees C (4,900 degrees F). That's hot enough to melt iron, not to mention ice. In addition, the Sun's tidal force (the difference in the Sun's gravitational force on the nucleus's near and far sides), combined with the nucleus's 10-hour rotation, could help to break it apart.

The closest approach to the Sun is called perihelion. If ISON breaks up before then, as comets sometimes do, little or nothing visible may emerge from the other side of the close encounter. If the nucleus holds together, we might get a memorable celestial sight early in the December dawns, at least for people who know exactly where to look.

If the comet breaks into pieces around or after perihelion, the pieces wouldn't disperse too far apart to show. More icy surface area would be exposed to the solar broiling, more dust and gas would blow off to make a brighter tail, and the December dawn show could be glorious.

No one yet knows what will happen.

WHERE TO LOOK

Even as it approaches the Sun, the warming comet has brightened into binocular visibility. Amateur astronomers have also been taking spectacular long-exposure photos of it through telescopes, such as the one at the top of this page.

The naked-eye sightings of ISON that have been reported so far come from skilled observers under very dark skies using highly detailed star charts to pinpoint its exact location.

“If you want to try viewing ISON in binoculars before perihelion, don’t wait!” says Sky & Telescope associate editor Tony Flanders. “It’s appearing much lower each morning as it approaches the Sun. Fortunately, it has also been brightening rapidly, so it’s actually getting a little easier to see. But nobody can guess how long that will continue.”

Find a spot with a completely unobstructed view of the east-southeast horizon. Start looking at least an hour before your local sunrise time and continue scanning the sky as dawn grows brighter. The planets Mercury and Saturn and the star Spica help to point the way, as shown in our daily dawn-scene graphics here. The comet symbol is exaggerated; it’s meant to show where the comet is, not to be a realistic picture.

http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/IsonVic_1122_1200px.jpg


http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/IsonVic_1124_1200px.jpg


http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/IsonVic_1125_1200px.jpg


http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/IsonVic_1126_1200px.jpg


A BONUS COMET

A second comet is currently higher and easier to see in binoculars before dawn's first light begins! That means looking at least 90 minutes before your local sunrise time. It's named Comet Lovejoy C/2013 R1 (not to be confused with the other three Comet Lovejoys discovered by Terry Lovejoy of Australia). You'll need to use Sky & Telescope's detailed finder chart for it. Included with that is a similarly detailed chart for ISON among faint stars.

We'll have more to say as ISON rounds the Sun and its future becomes clear.
Follow SkyandTelescope.com/ISONas your comet message-central day by day.

BACKGROUND

A comet’s trajectory through the solar system is governed by the laws of gravity, so astronomers can predict months or years in advance exactlywhen and where a comet will appear in the sky. But how bright it will be is a lot less predictable. This is especially true of a "Sun-grazer" comet like ISON.

Some Sun-grazers have performed better than expected, such as Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965 and Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 in 2011. Many experts predicted that the nucleus of the 2011 Comet Lovejoy would disintegrate during its very close pass by the Sun that December, but it survived long enough before breaking up to produce a spectacular long tail easily visible for people in the Southern Hemisphere.

“All of us at Sky & Telescope are hoping that Comet ISON will be a glorious spectacle in December,” saysSky & Telescope editor in chief Robert Naeye. “But we also remember past comet flops such as Comet Kohoutek in 1974, which was actually a fairly nice comet but unfortunately fell far short of the hype. It’s important for the media to emphasize the unpredictable nature of comets, and that it’s by no means guaranteed that ISON will turn into a show-stopping comet later this year, or even one that most people will see at all without good charts and optical aid.”

ISON is named for the Russia-based International Scientific Optical Network, in which the comet's discoverers, Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski, were participating when they discovered the incoming comet in September 2012.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/about/pressreleases/Comet_ISON_Grows_Exciting_as_Moment_of_Truth_Nears.html


(Added bit to some of my fellow Avalonian posters on this thread : I would really like to explore some of the other (non-ISON) subjects that you've raised on this thread. Hopefully, if you're up for it, we can get into some of it once we've waved goodbye to ISON :grouphug: )

[panopticon]

Just finished watching a documentary from PBS that was getting nattered on about in a few channels.

The show is available in the US here:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365124349/

I used a US based VPN to watch it and it was quite good.

I'd forgotten the link between Newton, his theory of gravity and the 1680 comet (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Comet_of_1680). Also, I didn't know that Halley and Newton had discussed gravitation fields and their relationship to comet orbits.

Fascinating stuff, though typical of US productions it went all over the place in the first 20 minutes or so.

Anyway, for what it's worth I enjoyed it so if you get a spare hour maybe have a gitsy (surely some industrious individual will post it on Youtube soon).

Cheers,
Pan

[McMaster]

Yes, long period comets do excist, no doubt about that. :)
I'm just not so sure about the Oort cloud.
Cloud is a misnomer for a hypothetical spherical fairly local position for comets, average distance 40,000 AU from the Sun. According to Van Flandern, this huge space 'by calculation, contains 10,000,000,000 comets with an average separation of 2,000,000,000 km between each.

For Van Flandern, the conventional Oort cloud theory is absurd, but the idea makes sense in his theory of comets originating from planetary breakup. His main prediction is that

An adequate modelling of stellar perturbations will show that all new comet orbits intersected at a common point in the inner solar system 3 million years ago. (Dark Matter, Missing Planets… p.192) It could be that we have hit a harmonic of that 3 million year period, whereby a whole subgroup of these comets are coming to perihelion at around the same time.

This does make sense and sounds plausible. Same with the cuiper belt, there propably has been a planet orbiting at that spot, but for some reason have been destroid some time in the past.

[chocolate]

This is an interview with Richard C. Hoagland, quite informative in my opinion:
aG_NfvuOBgI

This also can be related to the Barak Obama Thread.
May be I had to post it there, but because I see a lot of interest going in the direction of ISON and don't want to double on material, if this would rest better in the Obama Thread I have no objection the post to be moved by the moderators there. :o

[Hervé]

Hoaxland is banned from any non-channeled comet threads... :)

[MorningSong]

spaceweather.com's update on ISON:


ISON, THE DAWN COMET: Comet ISON is plunging toward the sun and brightening as it heads for a perilous close encounter on Nov. 28th. This morning, with the "final countdown" clock at T-7 days, Juan Carlos Casado photographed the sundiver over the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/21nov13/dawncomet_strip.jpg

"The comet is over the distant island of Gran Canaria," he says, "while in the central cloud we can see the planet Mercury. ISON was at the limit of naked-eye visibility, but it was an easy target for my SLR camera with a small telephoto lens (85 mm focal length) on a static tripod and 6 seconds of exposure."

Because Comet ISON is moving into the rosy glow of dawn, it will soon be impossible for cameras on Earth to track it. NASA's fleet of solar spacecraft are about to take over. Later today, Comet ISON will enter the field of view of the STEREO-A spacecraft. The Heliospheric Imager on STEREO-A will pick up the comet just as Earth-bound telescopes begin to lose it. In the days that follow, STEREO-B, SOHO and the Solar Dynamics Observatory will join the hunt, providing continuous views of Comet ISON all the way to perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on Nov. 28th. Stay tuned!

And there's this, too:


WHY IS COMET ISON GREEN? Taken by hundreds of people around the world, the pictures of Comet ISON we receive every day vary widely in quality, context and camera settings. However, they all seem to have one thing in common: the comet looks green. Why? To answer this question, Italian amateur atronomers Paolo Corelli and Dario Comino used a high-dispersion spectrometer to analyze light from the comet's atmosphere. Here are there results:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/21nov13/spectrum_strip.gif

The spectrum of Comet ISON is dominated by a green spectral line from diatomic carbon (C2). This substance is common in the atmospheres of comets, and it glows green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space. The spectrum also shows a weaker but still significant blue emission line from C2. Comet ISON's mixture of green and blue light gives it the aqua hue seen in many long-exposure photographs. Finally, the spectrum reveals a contribution from atomic oxygen. This element is familiar to readers of spaceweather.com as a source of green light in auroras.

I had heard that the green color was due to cyanide.... this sounds better!

[loveoneanother]

Hello fellow comet-watchers :grouphug:

You've got to have a look at the short movie that's in the latest Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) blog. I don't know how to get the movie into a post to put it directly on to this thread so the best i can do is copy a small part of the article to whet the ol' appetite and encourage you to click on the CIOC link at the end and have a look for yourself.....you won't be disappointed i promise.....it's amazing :)

ISON, Encke, Mercury and Home

Submitted by Karl Battams on Thursday November 21st 2013

Yesterday, amateur astronomers online were very quick to point out that comet ISON had entered the field of view of the NASA STEREO-A Heliospheric Imager 1 ("HI-1A") camera. It wasn't much to look at, as we only had available our low-resolution "beacon" data, but nonetheless you could clearly see a bright streak on the left-hand side of the HI-1A images. It was nice and reassuring to see the comet arrive in the camera but we had been expecting it for a long time, and indeed had been watching it in the wider field "HI-2" camera on that spacecraft since October 11, 2013.

When our STEREO imagers first caught sight of it, the comet was barely registering magnitude 12 on the brightness scale, and many astronomers were understandably feeling edgy as it labored slowly in it rate of brightening. But just over a week ago, comet ISON suddenly and spectacularly began to live up to our lofty aspirations, experiencing a dramatic outburst that saw it brighten from a 7th magnitude "green fuzzball" into one of the most visually stunning comets we've seen in years, now shining brightly at 3rd or 4th magnitude!

The stage was set, and timing couldn't have been better for ISON to make its appearance into the higher-resolution HI-1 camera on STEREO-A - and that's what I'm excited to share with you now. But of course, no great scene in space is complete without a cast of supporting characters, and ISON has chosen a great set of companions for this scene. Click on the below image to watch something pretty awesome!

http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/ison-encke-mercury-home

(Added bit : If anyone knows how to get that movie on to this thread in a post.....yes please :biggrin: )

[ThePythonicCow]

(Added bit : If anyone knows how to get that movie on to this thread in a post.....yes please :biggrin: )
Do you refer to this?

http://www.isoncampaign.org/files/images/blogpics/encke_ison_crop_srem_lr.gif

[sheme]

Thanks, Such an interesting talk from Hoagland fascinating insights, please take the time to listen. If you believe in the power of the mind we could change everything.

[seleka]

I think it is possible that Ison is the blue kachina and the incoming object so many people are seeing in the southwest sky is the red kachina. Ison is blue. The other one is reddish when observed thru telescope. It also is not round, but appears to be winged - in looks. It is planetary size, not plane size. Historical accounts cite a "winged destroyer." I can't remember - is the blue the destroyer and red the purifier or visa versa in Hopi teachings? Anyway - no one has any idea what that red thing is, how long it will take to get here, where "here" will be - and NASA is still pretending it isn't there.

you have it right, there is to be a 'blue star kachina' with lots of destruction, at which time the ceremonies of the Hopis are to cease according to the prophecies (from memory, but I will provide a great link). Then the destroyer (red star). I want to tell you though, the intermediary between Hopi and white man's world, Miriam Delicado is very adamant that this is not the blue star kachina from prophecy. To me it fits perfectly and I am not so sure. Links: prophecies- (this is the first site I really used for study, back in 99, not sure if it is updated, but has a lot collected- http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/pan.htm#WHITE
Miriam's site. I am not sure where on here she refutes it, I have seen it in her facebook updates http://www.bluestarprophecy.com/bio

Edit: I am a Rainbow Warrior. We will know when and what to do as it needs to be done I am positive.

[seleka]

(Added bit : If anyone knows how to get that movie on to this thread in a post.....yes please :biggrin: )
Do you refer to this?

http://www.isoncampaign.org/files/images/blogpics/encke_ison_crop_srem_lr.gif

This may be too OT, but I saw that movie last night too and was struck how much it reminded me of sperm travelling to an egg (earth).

[MorningSong]

Here you can see ISON in Stereo Ahead HI1:

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/beacon/planets/ahead_hi1_planets.jpg

[Hervé]

Follow it here: http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/thumbnail.shtml

Click here for file list. (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/index.shtml)

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/128/20131122_071801_s7h1A.jpg (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_071801_s7h1A.jpg)
07:18:01 UT
[caption] (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_071801_s7h1A.txt)

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/128/20131122_091801_s7h1A.jpg (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_091801_s7h1A.jpg)
09:18:01 UT
[caption] (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_091801_s7h1A.txt)

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/128/20131122_111801_s7h1A.jpg (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_111801_s7h1A.jpg)
11:18:01 UT
[caption] (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_111801_s7h1A.txt)

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/128/20131122_131801_s7h1A.jpg (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_131801_s7h1A.jpg)
13:18:01 UT
[caption] (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/22/ahead/hi1/1024/20131122_131801_s7h1A.txt)

Last Revised: Friday, 22-Nov-2013 10:36:59 EST
Responsible NASA Official: http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/img/gurman_email.png
Privacy Policy and Important Notices (http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/HP_Privacy.html)
Feedback and comments: webmaster (kevin.m.addison@nasa.gov)

[Hervé]

Latest tail wagging...


http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/img/20131114hi2a-ISON.gif

[loveoneanother]

Do you refer to this?

http://www.isoncampaign.org/files/images/blogpics/encke_ison_crop_srem_lr.gif

That's the one Paul (in answer to the highlighted part above).....thank you very much for doing that.....it's much appreciated :yo:

It's the first time i've ever seen anything like that and i must admit initially i found it a bit confusing. I couldn't understand for instance how i was seeing the Earth between the comets and the Sun when i knew they were both inside the Earth's orbit ? Thankfully though, with a little research into the positioning of Stereo A and it's viewing angle, i was finally able to work it out.....phew !

(The next part of this post isn't directed at you personally Paul. I thought i'd use the rest of the post to let other Avalonians know about something else that might be worth watching.....thanks again :) )


NASA HANGOUT : COMET ISON LIVE

FIRE vs ISON


WATCH THE EPIC BATTLE LIVE

Thursday November 28th 1 - 3.30pm EST / 6 - 8.30pm GMT

The ultimate battle of fire and ice! Who will win, the sun or Comet#ISON?

Join #NASA as we follow the journey of Comet ISON as it slingshots around the sun.

Will the awesome gravity and energy of the sun break up this cosmic ball of ice and rock? Will it break up? Or will it pass the sun intact to put on a dazzling show in the December sky?

Watch as NASA solar physicists track the comet LIVE from the mission control for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory,@NASA_SDO, during#ISON’s closest approach to the sun.

We'll also be joined by comet scientists joining from Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, where the solar telescope will be observing ISON and by science writer Phil Plait.

NASA scientists will answer your questions LIVE on air here on Google+, in the YouTube comments section during the live broadcast, or via Twitter using #ISON and #askNASA.

The participants in this Hangout include:

• C. Alex Young, Solar Physicist, Associate Director for Science in the Heliophysics Science Division and co-founder of The Sun Today - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.,

• W. Dean Pesnell, Solar Physicist and Project Scientist for the Solar Dynamics Observatory - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.,

• Karl Battams, Comet Scientist for the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, and solar spacecraft lead for NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign, joining from Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, where the solar telescope will be observing ISON.

• Phil Plait, writes Slate's 'Bad Astronomy' blog and is an astronomer, science evangelizer, and author of the books "Bad Astronomy" and "Death from the Skies!"

https://plus.google.com/events/c8t7i5dbr1k50oq89giloiqe8rc


(Added bit : I watched the following video and thought it would serve as a good explanation to those who might be wondering what all the fuss is about :rolleyes: )


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKLEIr5y7sg

[seleka]

How big is Ison? Bpearthwatch video

q_fxAz-7w7Q

oops skip- he overs it in the new video too below

[seleka]

I have watched him for a year or so and he asks questions, but is down to earth, never said warning before. latest vid. What is the warning?

k7cUDtRlhAg

[chocolate]

This is an interview with Richard C. Hoagland, quite informative in my opinion:
aG_NfvuOBgI

This also can be related to the Barak Obama Thread.
May be I had to post it there, but because I see a lot of interest going in the direction of ISON and don't want to double on material, if this would rest better in the Obama Thread I have no objection the post to be moved by the moderators there. :o


Good idea to re-watch in the light of the BPEarthWatch (last) warning video.

Richard C. Hoagland said a few important things:

what we see on the images doesn't present a danger
comet ISON is not ENTIRELY NATURAL OBJECT
and so on.
The first 30 minutes ARE enough to put all fear at peace, temporarily at least. PLEASE WATCH/LISTEN.

[tonyp]

OMG not another stupid comet appearing on the horizon unless its another stupid comet or asteroid which for the seriously enlightened of our species...is a non event

[Camilo]

---------------------------------------------------------

[Hervé]

Bye, bye ISON … for now (http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/11/23/bye-bye-ison-for-now/)

Posted on November 23, 2013 (http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/11/23/bye-bye-ison-for-now/)


http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-Nov23-Jaeger.jpg
Truly amazing image of Comet ISON taken Friday Nov. 22 from Austria with an 80mm (3.1″) telescope and two 1-minute exposures. Its tail is exceptionally long but faint. Credit: Michael Jaeger

[Hervé]

Comet C/2012 S1 ISON, good tail action in STEREO (20 November, 2013) (http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-good-tail-action-in.html)


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NAm-PiQSuMY/UpChwBYCrpI/AAAAAAAAKMM/a0vukYS0Q-k/s1600/Diffference+Labelled+SQRT+Registered+Result+of+20-11-13-H2A-2.png
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H2A instrument on 20 November to 14 November. 3 comets, Mercury and the Pleiades are labelled so you know where to look in the animation.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYUN2eRqaeo/UpCh8SNQfOI/AAAAAAAAKMU/og33kWzEiEA/s1600/Diffference+SQRT+Registered+Result+of+20-11-13-H2A-2.gif


12 images stacked in ImageJ, aligned then the imges differenced to cancel out stars. Click to embiggen12 Images stacked in ImageJ and assembled into an animation. You will need to click on the image to embiggen it, so that you can see ISON, Lovejoy and 2P/Enke and their tails at their best.



The latest images of comets ISON, Lovejoy and Enke in the STEREO (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/comet_ison/) H2A instrument (http://www.stereo.rl.ac.uk/). The data was processed using a difference macro in ImageJ which subtracts out non moving pixels to bring out more details with the comets. Enke and ISON have active tails, and I may have caught the edge of a tail disconnection event with ISON.

[...]

# (http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-good-tail-action-in.html) posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:24 pm

[SilentFeathers]

P7atiCtOHH4

[loveoneanother]

Comet C/2012 S1 ISON, good tail action in STEREO (20 November, 2013) (http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/)


Hi again Amzer Zo.....i clicked on the above link you provided to have another look at the blog and saw that there is a new blog there. I think there are copyright issues involved with the images in the blog so i won't try posting them here but could you please follow the link and have a look at the first picture. I'm sure it's just a quirk in the timing of the photo but it doesn't half look like the two objects are connected.....not possible, right ?

Good photo though.....i like that one :)

http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/

[loveoneanother]

P7atiCtOHH4

Apologies for tagging the following onto your post SilentFeathers but it is related.....kind of (thanks for the vid. by the way :) )

I'm not going to take the credit for this. It was pointed out by one of SuspiciousObservers subscribers in the comments section of his latest video. If you look closely above the time display there is another object moving in the background. I have no idea what it could be of course but it was another good spot by someone who's got better eyes than me :cool:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/23nov13/ison_encke_nov19_22.gif?PHPSESSID=lsbte9a7k0kgh6avjcgcs1hfb7

Here's the link to the latest Spaceweather article where the above movie came from :

http://spaceweather.com/

[SilentFeathers]

P7atiCtOHH4

Apologies for tagging the following onto your post SilentFeathers but it is related.....kind of (thanks for the vid. by the way :) )

I'm not going to take the credit for this. It was pointed out by one of SuspiciousObservers subscribers in the comments section of his latest video. If you look closely above the time display there is another object moving in the background. I have no idea what it could be of course but it was another good spot by someone who's got better eyes than me :cool:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/23nov13/ison_encke_nov19_22.gif?PHPSESSID=lsbte9a7k0kgh6avjcgcs1hfb7

Here's the link to the latest Spaceweather article where the above movie came from :

http://spaceweather.com/

It's Comet Encke

[Hervé]

[...]

It's Comet Encke

???... :


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NAm-PiQSuMY/UpChwBYCrpI/AAAAAAAAKMM/a0vukYS0Q-k/s1600/Diffference+Labelled+SQRT+Registered+Result+of+20-11-13-H2A-2.png

http://www.isoncampaign.org/files/images/blogpics/encke_ison_crop_srem_lr.gif

[SilentFeathers]

I see two objects moving ISON and ENCKE, but I don't have my glasses on either :)

[Hervé]

[...] If you look closely above the time display there is another object moving in the background. I have no idea what it could be of course but it was another good spot by someone who's got better eyes than me :cool:

[...]


https://fwtinw.dm2302.livefilestore.com/y2pwExVfbq18jaHatmW6k0bN1F74ls2fYCYKl9dLAlEEFHdBcZ1XRBzQfUnQY8ckFwN686g5JNbZHmICYf96Cj51A2N9hEqo6Mmw CCZxGrUfEg/Image-2013-11-24-17h-42mn-29a.jpg?psid=1

https://fwtinw.dm1.livefilestore.com/y2pDMDlVjX44DVMB0x8cMh6WL7wbeUCSU4qYDXOKaBHbX21IJZTBC31CAY-stisuqW4ZMQ_ljvx06vPGiI7Bc8LrZObRUod5p3DhMcXNw_Kbko/Image-2013-11-24-17h-43mn-28a.jpg?psid=1


Hope this helps?

For a better spotting:

http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a910e105e07f9070866adaae10b.r15.cf1.rackcdn.com/Apollo-Lasky-oddbig_1385498995_lg.gif

[Hervé]

Comet C/2012 S1 ISON, good tail action in STEREO (20 November, 2013) (http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/)


Hi again Amzer Zo.....i clicked on the above link you provided to have another look at the blog and saw that there is a new blog there. I think there are copyright issues involved with the images in the blog so i won't try posting them here but could you please follow the link and have a look at the first picture. I'm sure it's just a quirk in the timing of the photo but it doesn't half look like the two objects are connected.....not possible, right ?

Good photo though.....i like that one :)

http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/

I am not sure I completely understand what you are trying to convey but if I got it right, one of the object is Ison with a long tail and the other is "Spica"... a star in the background... far far away... :)

Otherwise Ison and Lovejoy are two comets which happen to be visible and not too far apart in the night sky, as seen from earth.

Here is the blog in question: http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/2013/11/readers-images-of-comets-ison-and.html

The feat achieved by that reader is that the pictures were taken without the telescope being computer aided in the tracking of the comets' positions (Ison and Lovejoy) in order to do a stacking of several pictures to obtain a compounded final picture.

PS: I'll change the embeded link in my post to connect to the correct blog in the archive.

[seleka]

[...] If you look closely above the time display there is another object moving in the background. I have no idea what it could be of course but it was another good spot by someone who's got better eyes than me :cool:

[...]


https://fwtinw.dm2302.livefilestore.com/y2pwExVfbq18jaHatmW6k0bN1F74ls2fYCYKl9dLAlEEFHdBcZ1XRBzQfUnQY8ckFwN686g5JNbZHmICYf96Cj51A2N9hEqo6Mmw CCZxGrUfEg/Image-2013-11-24-17h-42mn-29a.jpg?psid=1

https://fwtinw.dm1.livefilestore.com/y2pDMDlVjX44DVMB0x8cMh6WL7wbeUCSU4qYDXOKaBHbX21IJZTBC31CAY-stisuqW4ZMQ_ljvx06vPGiI7Bc8LrZObRUod5p3DhMcXNw_Kbko/Image-2013-11-24-17h-43mn-28a.jpg?psid=1


Hope this helps?




yes, totlly, I see it on the blue pic now

[loveoneanother]

I am not sure I completely understand what you are trying to convey but if I got it right, one of the object is Ison with a long tail and the other is "Spica"... a star in the background... far far away... :)


I think the only thing i managed to convey, if anything, is my ignorance :o

I don't know if i'm alone in my thinking on this but having had my head filled with the notion that comets might be electrical in nature (as opposed to simply being 'dirty snowballs'), i find myself looking for anything definitive that might prove that to me ?

(I've been secretly hoping that someone would see and photograph, something like an electrical arcing event (sorry, don't know the correct way to describe such an event but something like a lightning bolt ?) connecting one of the comets to a nearby planetary body. I was gonna say that would be pretty cool but thinking about it, a more relevant way to say it is that would be pretty hot :cool: )

As a newbie to the space scene, my mind is open to the way it all works and at this point in time the electric comet theory could go either way for me. Yes, to me, the Sun does appear to have a bit of a 'flare-up' when there is a comet nearby but the Sun also flares plenty when there's no comets around. In my head, i haven't been able to square that particular circle yet ?

I can only apologise to you and everyone else if i'm not quite up with the programme yet but there it is, that's me i'm afraid. I feel i'm slowly getting there though (wherever 'there' is ? ) and as an added bonus i'm enjoying the learnin' process enormously :)

[SilentFeathers]

Details on ISON have changed...JPL info

PROOF! COMET ISON HAS A 400,864 YEAR ORBIT!

nFFZgkvHD84

[loveoneanother]

I'm not going to take the credit for this. It was pointed out by one of SuspiciousObservers subscribers in the comments section of his latest video. If you look closely above the time display there is another object moving in the background. I have no idea what it could be of course but it was another good spot by someone who's got better eyes than me :cool:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/23nov13/ison_encke_nov19_22.gif?PHPSESSID=lsbte9a7k0kgh6av jcgcs1hfb7



Just posting to clear up the mystery of that 'extra' moving object in the above animation. It's been identified as Asteroid 216 KLEOPATRA. An impressive object, big enough to have a couple of 'moons' going around it (huh.....say what.....asteroids can have moons ? That's another layer of 'unrelated' information added to my comet-watching experience :rolleyes: ).

It's currently orbiting well outside Mars so isn't a player in the current ISON drama other than someone with a keen eye spotted it doing it's thing in the background. I'm definitely going to get into this Near Earth Object stuff more because it's so incredibly fascinating but not yet.....i wanna wave goodbye to ISON first :wave:

Here's a short animation of 216 KLEOPATRA just for information's sake and meanwhile.....it's back to the main-event for me :)


http://vimeo.com/20264897

.....and a bit more info for anyone else who might be interested :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/216_Kleopatra

[bennycog]

Thanx for that last post loveoneanother.

It slowly lends some credibility to the spiral/helix solar system theory.

When seen from these distances comets always remind me of the tadpole racing toward the egg :)

[Milneman]

They look like sperm. Just saying.

[seleka]

BPEarthwatch's latest. Hope ya'll enjoy these like I do.

y4pRPOIfc_g

[panopticon]

I accidentally posted this in another thread so double posting... :sorry:

From Spaceweather.com (http://www.spaceweather.com/):

###

COMET ISON, PARTING SHOTS: As Comet ISON approaches the sun, it is becoming increasingly difficult for observers on Earth to photograph the comet. Indeed, by Nov. 24th it seemed impossible. But it only seemed that way. Working from a high-altitude site in the Canary islands, Juan Carlos Casado successfully imaged Comet ISON on Sunday morning deep inside the rosy glow of dawn:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/24nov13/seaofclouds_strip.jpg

"I took this picture of Comet ISON on Nov. 24th at 6: 25 UT from the Teide Observatory," says Casado. "The comet was over the distant island of Gran Canaria above a sea of clouds about 1 hour before sunrise and only 16° from the sun. The exceptional atmospheric conditions of Teide Observatory allowed me to capture the image."

###

Another beautiful image of ISON from Earth. :)

[DeDukshyn]

Well, let's hope she survives the trip around, for some great viewing in early 2014! Maybe some Christmas bonus will help me get that telescope yet ... ;)

[DeDukshyn]

They look like sperm. Just saying.

If they contain water that has been somehow cast off of planet(s) - planet(s) with life, then there's not a bad chance they contain simple life in stasis (think of the amazing qualities of the water bear - or yet even far more simple life that can go into a stasis state), and thus they would also act as "sperm" to "fertilize" a barren planet (the egg), perhaps bringing up "children" in the form of new expressions of Life -- the Universe is, after all, very holographic ... ;)

[Snowflower]

Or, deduk, they could "seed" a planet with bacteria or viruses from which the inhabitants have no immunity. Black plague for instance.

[panopticon]

This is the first time I've seen an active public thread on Avalon with more members browsing it than guests. :)


There are currently 15 users browsing this thread. (11 members and 4 guests)
-- Pan

[loveoneanother]

This is the first time I've seen an active public thread on Avalon with more members browsing it than guests. :)


There are currently 15 users browsing this thread. (11 members and 4 guests)
-- Pan

"if you build it they will come".....loveoneanother :angel:

[seleka]

stumbled on this resource, not sure if it is just repeats, but lots of graphs...http://great-comet.com/
really looking forward to the nasa coverage, especially the media teleconference later today (11 am PT, 1 pm ET) http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45635 and I saw this tonight too,

-F5fcc6Twvo thinking of making a new thread about it and other videos that claim there is something about ISON or is there one of those? This is for astronomical mostly, right?

[greybeard]

From Ed Dames news letter 25th Nov 2013

" Over the past few months there has been some speculation around the internet concerning comet ISON and the Killshot event in which the public deserves an important update. Of course, far more information will be provided by Major Ed Dames on the next Coast to Coast AM show with George Noory so please contact coasttocoastam.com for more information regarding his next show appearance.

Comet ISON was a hot topic with Remote Viewer and military intelligence officer, Major Ed Dames (Army Ret.) during the Coast to Coast AM show on April 23, 2013. Major Dames stated that based strictly on Remote Viewing data, ISON would cause massive solar flares as it approached our sun; an event that would be truly unprecedented! He also expressed his concern about how much time we have left before the Killshot and what could actually trigger this event.

As with many Remote Viewing predictions publically revealed by Major Dames, this event came to pass! On November 19, 2013, the sun has fired a massive X-class flare towards ISON, also causing a radio blackout on Earth. This should act as a blasting wakeup call of things to come! On that note, some people have gotten the impression that ISON would indeed cause the beginning of the Killshot sequence (more details about this below) however, this was never the case. In fact, Ed Dames has announced one final live Killshot event on March 22, 1014 (far after comet ISON passes) in order to get the Killshot survival map into more peoples hands as time is indeed running short.


Because Remote Viewers can not pinpoint exact dates, pre-curser events are targeted as they lead up to the Killshot; creating a rough sequence of events to look out for. The Remote Viewing data obtained from running sessions on comet ISON did indeed create concern regarding the Killshot, but the most important question is WHY? First, Remote Viewers know that the Killshot is coming soon based on the fact that there are very few pre-curser events popping up during sessions today compared to ten years ago; indicating that time is short. One of the final precursor events appears to be a large passing space body or meteor shower that forces a craft in Earths orbit down to the ground. Based on the data, there is no smoking gun evidence that a large passing space body actually causes solar flares to strike Earth just that this is simply an event foreseen by Remote viewers before the Killshot occurs, but it's not to say this isn't the case as well. That being said, the data regarding ISON (appearing to cause solar flares) during an RV session would be cause for alarm. Was ISON going to be a coincidence? The direct cause? As a result, Major Ed Dames indeed expressed his concern about how comet ISON would cause solar flared (which happened on Nov. 19) but was cautious about stating that ISON would actually trigger the Killshot; expressing on national radio that he was simply "concerned" and it would be something to keep an eye on. In fact, today on November 25, 2013, the Remote Viewing Products department issued the following statement regarding the November 19 flare towards ISON and the prediction on Coast to Coast AM:

"It's important to always keep the public updated with everything we know. After discussing new RV data with Ed Dames in early 2013, we agreed that he should indeed express his concern regarding ISON on the Coast to Coast AM show. We understood that ISON was likely not the trigger event as other things must be in place first before the Killshot can occur, but when Ed Dames' team is getting data regarding solar flares associated with ISON, you tend to pay attention. The fact that the sun, which has been quite for a while now, spontaneously fires a massive X-class flare as ISON approaches proves that once again, the Remote Viewing data was right. This should be a wakeup call that the Killshot event is indeed coming and we should all be paying attention."

The above statement was also explained in different terms at the recent live Killshot events in Orlando and Reno. This is why it's crucial to get information from the source rather than listen to internet speculation.

For more information, visit www.TheKillshot.com"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

For me its all my be so (Hypothetical)
Chris

[bennycog]

Just finished watching the new National Geographic documentary on comet Ison. it is becoming increasingly hard to watch mainstream documentaries now after immersing into other theories of the universe such as Te Primer Fields.
The documentary was called "National Geographic ISON Comet Of The Century" great CGI effects and a lot of talk about the comet and other comets but no real data. No mention of when it passed Mars.

http://natgeotv.com.au/tv/comet-of-the-century/

[panopticon]

As Comet Ison goes around the Sun there are a number of satellites that are going to be monitoring its passage.

SDO is going to be providing pretty well real time images here (http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/), STEREO has a page that provides links where its preliminary images are going to appear here (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/comet_ison/ison_viewing.shtml) and SOHO will have its normal images available here (http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html).

Also here's a really cool lecture from 'Dr. Frank Summers of the Space Telescope Science Institute' that I found on the Hubble ISON blog (http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/comet_ison/). It's full of pictures of past comets, close-ups of comets, pictures of a space craft crashed into a comet and asteroids. He's really excited and it shows in what I reckon is a great lecture.

DiBkYAnQ_CY
-- Pan

[loveoneanother]

Woohoo.....i can't quite believe it guys but i think i got it.....i think i managed to get some shots of ISON !

I'm so excited i can't tell you. All i need is a second opinion from someone who is a bit more experienced with this sort of stuff and i can celebrate properly.

I don't know if this information helps but i was using a friends digital camera which is a Panansonic DMC-TZ7.....here.....

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/Products/DMC-TZ7/Overview/2032049/index.html

.....and all i did was rest the camera on the windowsill of an open bedroom window and start clicking away. I didn't know it at the time but i took 30 pictures pretty much one after the other as the Sun was coming over the rooftops this morning Tuesday 26th November. With the naked eye i couldn't see anything so with each shot i kept messing about with the zoom in the hope i might pick something up ?

You might need a magnifying-glass to see it if your eyes aren't all that but there's definitely something there. Please someone tell me i got comet ISON and i'm not just imagining it. I don't want to sway anyone's decision by saying where it is so if you could please take the time to have a look it would be very much appreciated. (If someone finds it and agrees it is ISON and knows how to put a location disc on the image to help other people to look in the right area that would be really helpful too.....thanks).

I can't believe it. My heart is going like the clappers trying to put this post together. I hope i'm not breaking any forum rules or thread etiquette putting this many pictures up and hope you'll all forgive me for doing it this time. I've only got a nine image limit so here's the first nine pictures in the order they were taken. What do you think ? Did i get ISON ?

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030459_zpsd2d6c9f4.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030459_zpsd2d6c9f4.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030460_zps6b440976.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030460_zps6b440976.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030461_zps36a91ef8.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030461_zps36a91ef8.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030462_zps1777f583.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030462_zps1777f583.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030463_zps3dd28913.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030463_zps3dd28913.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030464_zps36d016f3.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030464_zps36d016f3.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030465_zps9ce0d8ac.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030465_zps9ce0d8ac.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030466_zpsd1752b96.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030466_zpsd1752b96.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030467_zps2816fcf3.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030467_zps2816fcf3.jpg.html)

I've got to walk the dog now so i'll put some more pictures up when i get back.

[Hervé]

More of these giant wind turbine animations:


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-it2k25C7HZc/UpNA8LqwdKI/AAAAAAAAKNs/a8LfMq6nNSY/s1600/LOG+Registered+Result+of+36231420-1.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H1A instrument on 21 November. 2P/Enke is to the right and ISON is the big bright thing to the bottom left. Single frame of 26 images stacked in ImageJ and aligned then LOG processed to enhance dim details. [...] All 26 Images stacked in ImageJ, then the images LOGed to enhance detail and assembled into an animation.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e1bfLYZ1g6A/UpNBfJ6RYpI/AAAAAAAAKN0/DamboAbRwf4/s1600/Diff_SQRT_Registered+Result+of+36231420-1.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H1A instrument on 21 November. 2P/Enke is to the top right and ISON is the big bright thing to the bottom left. Single frame of 26 images stacked in ImageJ and aligned then the images differenced to cancel out stars. The vertical lines are imaging artefacts from Earth being too bright (off screen).[...] All 26 Images stacked in ImageJ, then the images differenced to cancel out stars and assembled into an animation.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fKOWbtvrmac/UpNSgOTYWyI/AAAAAAAAKOQ/7wzlJJ7VrCA/s1600/20-11-13-H1A_png.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON in medium resolution PNG images from STEREO H1A on 23 November. No processing. [...] 25 images stacked and animated using ImageJ, no other processing. If you look hard you can see 2P/Enke.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-it2k25C7HZc/UpNA8LqwdKI/AAAAAAAAKNs/a8LfMq6nNSY/s1600/LOG+Registered+Result+of+36231420-1.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H1A instrument on 21 November. All 26 Images stacked in ImageJ, then the images LOGed to enhance detail and assembled into an animation.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--gtsSwnna80/UpSbrLbsc1I/AAAAAAAAKP4/Tw57Wxr0404/s1600/LOG+Registered+Result+of+23-11-13-H1A-2.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H1A instrument on 23 November. 2P/Enke is to the right and ISON is the big bright thing in the centre. 13 images stacked in ImageJ and aligned then LOG processed to enhance dim details.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e1bfLYZ1g6A/UpNBfJ6RYpI/AAAAAAAAKN0/DamboAbRwf4/s1600/Diff_SQRT_Registered+Result+of+36231420-1.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H1A instrument on 21 November. 2P/Enke is to the top right and ISON is the big bright thing to the bottom left. 26 Images stacked in ImageJ, then the images differenced to cancel out stars and assembled into an animation. The vertical lines are imaging artefacts from Earth being too bright (off screen). Asteroid Kleopatra is towards the bottom of the image.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_kDPRoPWVR8/UpSbMIIA9II/AAAAAAAAKPw/jVW9wwG0Oys/s1600/Difference_Registered+Result+of+23-11-13-H1A-1.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) imaged in the STEREO satellites H1A instrument on 23 November. 2P/Enke is to the top right and ISON is the big bright thing to the centre. 13 images stacked in ImageJ and aligned then the images differenced to cancel out stars. The vertical lines are imaging artefacts from Earth being too bright (off screen).



From: http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/

[loveoneanother]

OMG.....you're not gonna believe what i've gone and done.....now this is properly embarrassing :(



I was so busy this morning after taking the pictures i was really struggling to find the time i needed to upload them to photobucket and sort out a post. By the time i got round to it i was really rushing and i was also under added time pressure to get to a dog-walking job i do every day.

I tried lumping all the photos i had taken together and putting them in the same post but a message came up telling me i had too many images in the post so then i had to go back and put all the images into smaller blocks and try posting them again and that's where the mistake came. I wasn't concentrating like i should have been and i copied and pasted the wrong block of pictures into the post.

I was already late for my dog-walking job so i just submitted the post, waited for it to be accepted and literally ran straight out the door. I simply didn't have the time to check the post again once it was on the thread. When i finally got some time to get back online again i was horrified to see what i'd done. What a roller-coaster of emotions i've had today. Utter euphoria turned to total despair in a matter of hours.

I'm so sorry for any confusion this has probably caused, all i can do is throw myself on the floor and beg for your collective mercy !!!!!

Here's the sequence of photos i should have posted and the one with the picture of the 'objects' in is the fifth one down. The rest of the pictures either side are before and after ones for reference purposes. As luck would have it, a seagull flew across the frame in the fifth picture and it makes a good reference point to look for one of the objects. The first object is halfway between the bird and the tree and the other two objects to look for are to the left of the chimney. One is almost level with the top of the chimney and quite close to it on the left and the other is on an angle of about 45 degrees about a third of the way along a line between the corner of the chimney and the aerial off to the left.

I'm really sorry to be putting you all through this again but does anyone know what those objects are ? If my slump in excitement is any indicator, i'm almost willing to bet none of the objects in the picture is a comet !

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030481_zps32193770.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030481_zps32193770.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030482_zps403a1156.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030482_zps403a1156.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030483_zps1506ea82.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030483_zps1506ea82.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030484_zps8bf8bd43.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030484_zps8bf8bd43.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030485_zpse5e9ab67.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030485_zpse5e9ab67.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030486_zpseb197cc5.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030486_zpseb197cc5.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030487_zpsac208e83.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030487_zpsac208e83.jpg.html)

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a584/fishosopher/P1030488_zpse8eb5cd5.jpg (http://s1285.photobucket.com/user/fishosopher/media/P1030488_zpse8eb5cd5.jpg.html)

[seleka]

was that conference really just 7 min long? I started it at 11 on the nose, and it ended at 11:07? (PT) http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-news-audio http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45632

[MorningSong]

Here's todays shot of ISON over at STEREO:

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/beacon/planets/ahead_hi1_planets.jpg

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/beacon/planets/

[MorningSong]

Spaceweather.com has more info on ISON today:


IS COMET ISON IN TROUBLE? Astronomers using the IRAM millimeter telescope in Spain are reporting a sharp change in Comet ISON. "We observe consistent, rapid fading of the molecular emission lines between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25 by at least a factor of 20. This may indicate that the nucleus is now at best marginally active or that... it no longer exists," says Michal Drahus of Caltech.

It's too soon to panic, though. First, click on the image to watch a new movie from NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft (31 MB), then scroll down for continued discussion:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/26nov13/twocomets_strip2.gif

The movie spans a 3+ day interval from Nov. 21 (00:09 UT) to Nov. 24 (08:09 UT), which overlaps the period when IRAM recorded the fading emission lines. Although "puffs" of material can be seen billowing down the comet's tail, the comet itself still appears to be intact.

Astronomer Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign comments: "[The fading emission lines] could indicate that the nucleus has completely disrupted, releasing an enormous volume of dust while significantly reducing emission rates. Fragmentation or disruption of the nucleus has always been the highest risk factor for this comet so if this has indeed happened then while unfortunate, it would not be a surprise."

"However," he continues, "these reports are new, and while they are undoubtedly valid, we do still need to keep observing the comet to be sure what it happening. Remember: Comet ISON is a dynamically new sungrazing comet, fresh in from the Oort Cloud, and the last time we saw an object like this was never! Furthermore, a sungrazing comet just three days from perihelion has never been studied in this kind of detail - we're breaking new ground! When we factor in your standard 'comets are unpredictable' disclaimer, what we have is a huge recipe for the unknown."

Stay tuned for updates.

And there is also this:


WHICH SIDE OF THE SUN IS FACING COMET ISON? When Comet ISON sweeps through the sun's atmosphere on Nov. 28th, it will be in the 'hot zone' for CMEs. A strike by one of the massive storm clouds probably wouldn't destroy the comet, but it could have a dramatic effect on the comet's fragile tail. The odds of a strike depend on which side of the sun is facing the comet at the time of the flyby. This is something you can monitor using a NASA iPhone app called the Interplanetary 3D Sun:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/25nov13/3dsun_strip.gif



When is the best time to see auroras? Where is the best place to go? And how do you photograph them? These questions and more are answered in a new book, Northern Lights - a Guide, by Pal Brekke & Fredrik Broms.

Northern Lights - a Guide

NIGHT-SHINING CLOUDS REAPPEAR OVER ANTARCTICA: The southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. NASA's AIM spacecraft detected the first wispy tendrils of NLCs over Antarctica on Nov. 21st and since then the electric-blue clouds have spread and brightened. Scroll down the page and look left for latest images.

IS COMET ISON IN TROUBLE? Astronomers using the IRAM millimeter telescope in Spain are reporting a sharp change in Comet ISON. "We observe consistent, rapid fading of the molecular emission lines between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25 by at least a factor of 20. This may indicate that the nucleus is now at best marginally active or that... it no longer exists," says Michal Drahus of Caltech.

It's too soon to panic, though. First, click on the image to watch a new movie from NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft (31 MB), then scroll down for continued discussion:


Credits: This movie was made by reader Rob Matson using data from STEREO-A.

The movie spans a 3+ day interval from Nov. 21 (00:09 UT) to Nov. 24 (08:09 UT), which overlaps the period when IRAM recorded the fading emission lines. Although "puffs" of material can be seen billowing down the comet's tail, the comet itself still appears to be intact.

Astronomer Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign comments: "[The fading emission lines] could indicate that the nucleus has completely disrupted, releasing an enormous volume of dust while significantly reducing emission rates. Fragmentation or disruption of the nucleus has always been the highest risk factor for this comet so if this has indeed happened then while unfortunate, it would not be a surprise."

"However," he continues, "these reports are new, and while they are undoubtedly valid, we do still need to keep observing the comet to be sure what it happening. Remember: Comet ISON is a dynamically new sungrazing comet, fresh in from the Oort Cloud, and the last time we saw an object like this was never! Furthermore, a sungrazing comet just three days from perihelion has never been studied in this kind of detail - we're breaking new ground! When we factor in your standard 'comets are unpredictable' disclaimer, what we have is a huge recipe for the unknown."

Stay tuned for updates.

Realtime Comet ISON Photo Gallery

WHICH SIDE OF THE SUN IS FACING COMET ISON? When Comet ISON sweeps through the sun's atmosphere on Nov. 28th, it will be in the 'hot zone' for CMEs. A strike by one of the massive storm clouds probably wouldn't destroy the comet, but it could have a dramatic effect on the comet's fragile tail. The odds of a strike depend on which side of the sun is facing the comet at the time of the flyby. This is something you can monitor using a NASA iPhone app called the Interplanetary 3D Sun:

The app displays an interactive 3D model of the entire sun photographed by extreme UV cameras onboard NASA's twin STEREO probes. The data are realtime and fully interactive (pinch, spin and zoom). As shown in this target list, you can view the sun from many locations around the solar system--including Comet ISON.

Active regions are color-coded by their potential for flares: Orange means "expect M-class solar flares," while red denotes sunspots capable of X-flares. In the screen shot above we see that Comet ISON is bearing down on an active region, AR1904, that poses a threat for M-class eruptions. A CME might be in the offing after all.

[Hervé]

Getting close... (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45651)


nZi4Ecu_cfY

[Eram]

Getting close... (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45651)


nZi4Ecu_cfY

huh? did any one else see the second "moving" object in this vid?
It enters just between earth and mercury and descends slowly to cross the path of ISON (virtually) on the 15 second mark.

I haven't read the thread so maybe I mention something that has been discussed ....

[seleka]

Getting close... (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45651)


nZi4Ecu_cfY

huh? did any one else see the second "moving" object in this vid?
It enters just between earth and mercury and descends slowly to cross the path of ISON (virtually) on the 15 second mark.

I haven't read the thread so maybe I mention something that has been discussed ....

I believe it is comet Encke

[norman]

Even though I understand more or less what makes an object orbit ( however eccentric ), I can't understand why this comet doesn't just aim straight into the sun.

[Hervé]

[...]

I haven't read the thread so maybe I mention something that has been discussed ....

To get acquainted with a thread prior to posting does help avoid the embarrassment of an elephant barreling down a fine China store...

[Hervé]

Even though I understand more or less what makes an object orbit ( however eccentric ), I can't understand why this comet doesn't just aim straight into the sun.

... because it's "orbiting"... meaning anchored in an orbit which peg is the sun.

Otherwise, if it's just a stray bullet or missile it could head straight to the sun... or not. If not, then it could get "captured" by the sun and become an orbiting object which peg is the sun...

[Eram]

[...]

I haven't read the thread so maybe I mention something that has been discussed ....

To get acquainted with a thread prior to posting does help avoid the embarrassment of an elephant barreling down a fine China store...

True,

but in order to have time to live our daily lives, one is sometimes "forced" to take a chance and risk the punishment of the critical eh?

on top of that, I am not so easily embarrassed ,since I know I know very little ;)

[McMaster]

From Ed Dames news letter 25th Nov 2013

" Over the past few months there has been some speculation around the internet concerning comet ISON and the Killshot event in which the public deserves an important update. Of course, far more information will be provided by Major Ed Dames on the next Coast to Coast AM show with George Noory so please contact coasttocoastam.com for more information regarding his next show appearance.

Comet ISON was a hot topic with Remote Viewer and military intelligence officer, Major Ed Dames (Army Ret.) during the Coast to Coast AM show on April 23, 2013. Major Dames stated that based strictly on Remote Viewing data, ISON would cause massive solar flares as it approached our sun; an event that would be truly unprecedented! He also expressed his concern about how much time we have left before the Killshot and what could actually trigger this event.

As with many Remote Viewing predictions publically revealed by Major Dames, this event came to pass! On November 19, 2013, the sun has fired a massive X-class flare towards ISON, also causing a radio blackout on Earth. This should act as a blasting wakeup call of things to come! On that note, some people have gotten the impression that ISON would indeed cause the beginning of the Killshot sequence (more details about this below) however, this was never the case. In fact, Ed Dames has announced one final live Killshot event on March 22, 1014 (far after comet ISON passes) in order to get the Killshot survival map into more peoples hands as time is indeed running short.


Because Remote Viewers can not pinpoint exact dates, pre-curser events are targeted as they lead up to the Killshot; creating a rough sequence of events to look out for. The Remote Viewing data obtained from running sessions on comet ISON did indeed create concern regarding the Killshot, but the most important question is WHY? First, Remote Viewers know that the Killshot is coming soon based on the fact that there are very few pre-curser events popping up during sessions today compared to ten years ago; indicating that time is short. One of the final precursor events appears to be a large passing space body or meteor shower that forces a craft in Earths orbit down to the ground. Based on the data, there is no smoking gun evidence that a large passing space body actually causes solar flares to strike Earth just that this is simply an event foreseen by Remote viewers before the Killshot occurs, but it's not to say this isn't the case as well. That being said, the data regarding ISON (appearing to cause solar flares) during an RV session would be cause for alarm. Was ISON going to be a coincidence? The direct cause? As a result, Major Ed Dames indeed expressed his concern about how comet ISON would cause solar flared (which happened on Nov. 19) but was cautious about stating that ISON would actually trigger the Killshot; expressing on national radio that he was simply "concerned" and it would be something to keep an eye on. In fact, today on November 25, 2013, the Remote Viewing Products department issued the following statement regarding the November 19 flare towards ISON and the prediction on Coast to Coast AM:

"It's important to always keep the public updated with everything we know. After discussing new RV data with Ed Dames in early 2013, we agreed that he should indeed express his concern regarding ISON on the Coast to Coast AM show. We understood that ISON was likely not the trigger event as other things must be in place first before the Killshot can occur, but when Ed Dames' team is getting data regarding solar flares associated with ISON, you tend to pay attention. The fact that the sun, which has been quite for a while now, spontaneously fires a massive X-class flare as ISON approaches proves that once again, the Remote Viewing data was right. This should be a wakeup call that the Killshot event is indeed coming and we should all be paying attention."

The above statement was also explained in different terms at the recent live Killshot events in Orlando and Reno. This is why it's crucial to get information from the source rather than listen to internet speculation.

For more information, visit www.TheKillshot.com"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

For me its all my be so (Hypothetical)
Chris

I don't understand why people actually go with this kind of BS (not referring to you GB).
I have been member here on avalon for a pretty long time (from start of the original forum) and not once, even remotely (pun intented), have any of these "predictions" have come to pass and still these keeps coming and people get hyped over them.
Claiming that these "predictions" are confirmed by an x-class solar flare on a solar maximum is the same thing if I would predict that ice age is coming next week, because it was snowing a week ago.

If for once they could actually predict something factual, then I could change my mind, but as for now, I call all of these remote viewers and alien contacts getting privvy information a BS artists trying to make money from gullible people.

[loveoneanother]

It's all about the images now isn't it guys.....i thought this one was pretty cool :cool:

(If you come across any still images or movies we haven't seen yet please post them on to the thread. I'd love to have a record of everything that's been happening for future reference.....thanks.....i don't usually 'do' threads but i'm gonna remember this one for a long time to come :grouphug: )


http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011400/a011422/Red_Hi1_ISON_Still.png

It's getting so exciting now i can hardly breathe :pray:

[loveoneanother]

A picture can be better than a thousand words sometimes can't it :)

[MorningSong]

Update on ISON from spaceweather.com:


COMET ISON, SO FAR SO GOOD: Comet ISON is hurtling toward the sun today at 240,000 mph and, despite the rising heat, the comet appears to be intact. Yesterday, reports of fading spectral lines from the comet's core raised concerns that the icy nucleus might be disintegrating. Current images from NASA and ESA spacecraft, however, show the comet still going strong. Comet ISON has just entered the field of view of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/27nov13/isoncme_strip2.gif

The comet's entrance coincides with a bright CME racing away from the sun's southwestern limb. Astronomers have been wondering what might happen if a CME strikes Comet ISON. This CME, however, will probably miss. The source of the cloud is a farside active region, which is not directly facing the comet.

NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft is also monitoring the comet. Click to view a high-resolution movie (32 MB), which compresses 96 hours into less than 1 minute:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/26nov13/twocomets_strip2.gif

The movie spans a 3+ day interval from Nov. 21 to Nov. 24 roughly centered on the period when astronomers at the IRAM telescope in Spain recorded fading emission lines from the comet's core. Zoom your movie-player to full screen: Although "puffs" of material can be seen billowing down the comet's tail, the comet itself does not appear to be disintegrating. So what caused the fade...?

"I will admit that I was pretty worried yesterday morning when reports of lower production rates came in," says Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory and NASA's Comet ISON Observation Campaign. "However, the STEREO-A brightness has increased steadily over the subsequent 36 hr, and I'm more optimistic again. My off-the-cuff thought is that there was an [outburst of dust, which dampened the emission lines] from roughly Nov 20-22, and it has returned to brightening again."

Astronomer Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign urges readers to remember the following: "Comet ISON is a dynamically new sungrazing comet, fresh in from the Oort Cloud, and the last time we saw an object like this was never! Furthermore, a sungrazing comet just days from perihelion has never been studied in this kind of detail - we're breaking new ground! When we factor in your standard 'comets are unpredictable' disclaimer, what we have is a huge recipe for the unknown."

Stay tuned for updates.

[Billy]

A 10 min segment of the 1 hr BBC Horizon program on Ison.

KtgHocwrZso

[Hervé]

... close... closer...


http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-6_42am-Nov27_S.jpg
Comet ISON this morning heads for the head of the constellation Scorpius as seen in this photo taken by the Solar Heliospheric Observatory. The sun, hidden by a mask, is represented by the white circle. Notice that ISON has a second tail feature – most likely dust particles released during the recent disruption of its nucleus. Credit: NASA/ESA



http://astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2013/11/ISON-Nov27.jpg
Comet ISON as seen around 10 a.m. CST this morning Nov. 27 in SOHO. Note the spike from the comet’s head. This is an artifact created by the comet’s intensifying brightness. Credit: NASA/ESA

[Hervé]

... BOOM!


Comet C/2012 S1 ISON meets a Coronal Mass Ejection (or does It?) 27 November 2013


From: http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/



http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i3Eni1q6e1Q/UpXMiR0fI0I/AAAAAAAAKQQ/hHaT6INwfC4/s1600/27-11-13-LascoC3.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON in the field of view of the SOHOLASCO C3 imager (lower left). Animation of 30 SOHO images (http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater).



http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rWx_Hsieb2s/UpXMC9aZZgI/AAAAAAAAKQI/09OVsMrZW_E/s1600/27-11-13-COR2B_beacon-1.gif
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON (http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/comet-c2012-s1-ison-fires-up-15-22.html) in the field of view of the STEREO COR2B imager (lower left). Jupiter is the bright dot center left. Animation of 30 STEREO images (http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/beacon/beacon_secchi.shtml).

[panopticon]

17 hours til Perihelion.

For those who may have missed my earlier post here's an excellent lecture on comets given by Dr. Frank Summers of the Space Telescope Science Institute. He's really excited and this lecture is full of images of comets and even includes close-ups of 5 comets! IMO it's an excellent lecture and covers a lot of ground in quite a short period. I was impressed how many short period comets are in the solar system and the number of plotted asteroids shown in one of the graphics was surprising.

DiBkYAnQ_CY
-- Pan

[loveoneanother]

I've moved this image from post 181 and put it here to keep it current. I didn't realise when i copied it that it automatically updates itself. I don't know how often it updates itself but it's definitely changed since i first posted it.....wow.....how cool is that (be patient because it can take a little while for the image to appear in the post) :cool:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/1024/latest.jpg

[Hervé]

Not very long to wait now...


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kt2Y_V64rAY/Upce9QsVvBI/AAAAAAAAKT8/OU4eIXAHUKU/s1600/28-11-13-COR2A_beacon.gif
Latest 30 low resolution beacon images from the STEREO COR2A instrument animated. The Big blob is Venus.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F2btmV0HYHc/UpceUbDcjGI/AAAAAAAAKT0/nKc-VUkVFfE/s1600/28-11-13-LASSCOC3.gif
Latest 30 images from the SOHO LASCO C3 instrument animated. Comet ISON skims past delta Scorpii.


From: http://astroblogger.blogspot.fr/

[Hervé]

The path:


http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/pascal_perihelion.jpg

On November 28, 2013, the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft will off-point at three different positions as Comet ISON moves through perihelion. This website will display near realtime images and movies of this sungrazing comet. Images should begin appearing sometime between 12:45 pm and 1:00 pm ET.


SDO Views Comet ISON

We will point SDO at three different positions as Comet ISON moves through perihelion on November 28, 2013. This will let us look for the tail of the comet in our images. This movie shows you how we will point SDO. The clock in the lower left corner shows approximate UTC as a decimal.
View Movie » (http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/ISON_Observation.mpg)

[Hervé]

Some 'splanations:


http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a910e105e07f9070866adaae10b.r15.cf1.rackcdn.com/Lorenzo-Comolli-isonsoho_27nov_1385591672_lg.gif

Comet ISON imaged by SOHO LASCO C3 shows THREE tails!!! Now also a very faint and small Sodium tail seem to be present (see detail), while the ion tail is the biggest and the dust tail is clearly positioned along the orbit. http://spaceweathergallery.com/images/spacer.gif

[Hervé]

Lights... Cameras...

This picture is being updated every 20mn - 1/2 hour:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c2/1024/latest.jpg
Comet ISON has just entered the field of view of LASCO C2. At 1300 UTC Comet ISON was 7.5 R_sun from the center of the Sun, or 6.5 R_sun from the surface. Moving toward perihelion this afternoon. At 14:00, it is 6.5 R_sun from the center of the Sun (5.5 R_sun above the surface.) This is only 3.8 million km (2.4 million miles) above the surface of the Sun. It is nearing the point where the solar heating can evaporate the small particles, converting them to molecules and atoms, and causing the dust tail to disappear.


... along with this one (refresh you browser to get the latest update):

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/1024/latest.jpg


http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/images/SOHO6_lg.gif
Kreutz-group comet SOHO-006 in LASCO C2

[loveoneanother]

Tick tock tick tock http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/eating/popcorn.gif (http://www.sherv.net/emoticons.html)

(Just watched this while i'm waiting for the main show.....now what's goin' on :confused: ) :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEOGIX1E-s&feature=c4-overview&list=UUxz5R9YQMRW5QqElbAlMqRw

[loveoneanother]

Up and down we go.....woo what a ride :nod:

HANGING ON BY ITS FINGERNAILS

Thursday November 28th 2013

Last night I was optimistic that comet ISON would continue its dramatic brightening trend, and soar into the negative magnitudes. This morning it is indeed with a heavy heart that I show you the image opposite, in which we clearly see that ISON has faded rather dramatically in the past few hours. It is still likely around -1 magnitude, but this number is falling fast.

The question on everyone's lips is "will it survive perihelion?", and now I'm reluctantly thinking it seems very unlikely to survive at this point. I do think it will reach perihelion, and reach the NASA SDO field of view, but based on what I see it doing right now, I will be very surprised to see something of any consequence come out the other side.

BUT... at every single opportunity it can find, comet ISON has done completely the opposite of what we expect, and it certainly wouldn't be out of character for this dynamic object to again do something remarkable.

So, assuming ISON is indeed on its way out, what might have happened here? Well there's a clue in something we said yesterday on our Current Status page when we said that "Comet ISON is now behaving like a sungrazing comet". By that statement, we meant that it was no longer following the typical pattern of brightening that an more typical comet would follow, and instead was brightening at a dramatic rate as we see with sungrazing comets such as the Kreutz sungrazing comets that we see.

The ESA/NASA SOHO satellite discovers a new sungrazing Kreutz comet about every three days on average, but they are typically very small objects only tens of meters in diameter, that brighten rapidly in the C3 field of view and the quickly begin to vaporize and fade out a few hours before perihelion.

Wait... read that last sentence again: "brighten rapidly in the C3 field of view and the quickly begin to vaporize and fade out a few hours before perihelion". Does that sound familiar? It should, because that's exactly what comet ISON appears to be doing! We have been assuming - quite validly - that because ISON is (was?) a large sungrazing comet, it would behave more like Comet Lovejoy in 2011, and continue to brighten up all the way until it reaches perihelion.

But what if ISON's nucleus is no longer the same size that Lovejoy's nucleus was at this point? We know that a few months ago, ISON was at least two or three times larger than Lovejoy's ~500m diameter. But a lot has happened to ISON since then, including some enormous outbursts. It is certainly conceivable that ISON has simply lost too much mass on its way in, and has a relatively small nucleus, leading it to behave like a small sungrazer, rather than a large sungrazer.

It's useful to understand what happens to small sungrazers and why we tend to see them begin to fade out at around 11-14 solar radii from the Sun (~8-10 million kilometers, 4-6 million miles). Recall that as comets approach the Sun, their ices begin to vaporize ("sublimate"), releasing dust and gas into the comet's fuzzy coma. But when we get really close to the Sun, the surface temperature on the comet starts to get very hot, and not only do the ices sublimate, but the rocky material begins to boil off too! We think it's this process that really kills of the small sungrazers, and it is certainly well within the bounds of reasonability that ISON simply can't withstand the complete vaporization of its surface.

Is there any hope?

YES! Don't give up now! There is only a few hours until perihelion, and anything could happen. ISON may have been outbursting in the LASCO field of view, and a rocky nucleus could still exist at the center of all that. If there is still something solid there, and it reaches perihelion, then even if it falls apart at that point, we will still see something emerge from the solar atmosphere. And even if the comet does get completely destroyed in the next few hours, I hope that we will get a spectacular show in the SDO images. I also want to note that we are analyzing the SOHO data very carefully and we do see some evidence that maybe ISON's gas production is completely finished but dust production is continuing at a steady rate. Indeed Matthew just said to me, "I have never seen light-curve behavior like this! It's doing completely different things in the different color filters!

He has looked at well over 1,000 sungrazing comets, so when he says a comet is weird... it's weird! So the bottom line is that we have contradictory evidence and we're still trying to interpret it. There is hope for comet ISON!

Regardless of what unfolds today, please remember this: we're watching a truly unique astronomical event for which we have no similar occurrence on record, and we're getting to watch it unfold live on the internet. That's worth restating: this is one of the more extraordinary astronomical events to happen in modern history, and we get to sit in our comfy chairs and watch a giant ball of 4.5 billion year old ice hurtle through the Sun's million-degree outer atmosphere at 0.1% of the speed of light, 93-million miles away from us. Regardless of sizzle, fizzle, or a victorious reemergence, comet ISON's perihelion is a truly spectacular event!

http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/hanging-by-its-fingernails

[seleka]

Lights... Cameras...

This picture is being updated every 20mn - 1/2 hour:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c2/1024/latest.jpg
Comet ISON has just entered the field of view of LASCO C2. At 1300 UTC Comet ISON was 7.5 R_sun from the center of the Sun, or 6.5 R_sun from the surface. Moving toward perihelion this afternoon. At 14:00, it is 6.5 R_sun from the center of the Sun (5.5 R_sun above the surface.) This is only 3.8 million km (2.4 million miles) above the surface of the Sun. It is nearing the point where the solar heating can evaporate the small particles, converting them to molecules and atoms, and causing the dust tail to disappear.


... along with this one (refresh you browser to get the latest update):

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/1024/latest.jpg


http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/images/SOHO6_lg.gif
Kreutz-group comet SOHO-006 in LASCO C2





are these times UTC?

[Hervé]

[...]

Comet ISON has just entered the field of view of LASCO C2. At 1300 UTC Comet ISON was 7.5 R_sun from the center of the Sun...



[...]




are these times UTC?

Hi karika,

Time for you to visit this thread: How to quote part of a post (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?13680-How-to-quote-part-of-a-post) and then hop into the Sandbox thread: OK to practice posting here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?14962-Sandbox-thread-OK-to-practice-posting-here) for practice...

[loveoneanother]

It's fast and furious folks.....i gotta put this video in to my favourites.....it's the south-east limb i've got my eyes on and that ejection coming off it has surely gotta give the Earth a glancing blow :unsure:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EttUhrFVACs

[loveoneanother]

The APPROACH 'kiosks' are recording at the SDO. Click on the 'view kiosk' tab on any of the images in the top row and have a look :) :

http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[loveoneanother]

ISON starting the turn around the Sun

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/28/ahead/cor2/512/20131128_165424_d7c2A.jpg

[seleka]

[...]

Comet ISON has just entered the field of view of LASCO C2. At 1300 UTC Comet ISON was 7.5 R_sun from the center of the Sun...



[...]




are these times UTC?

Hi karika,

Time for you to visit this thread: How to quote part of a post (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?13680-How-to-quote-part-of-a-post) and then hop into the Sandbox thread: OK to practice posting here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?14962-Sandbox-thread-OK-to-practice-posting-here) for practice...

thank you I am very familiar with this type of forum and reposted it in its entirety on purpose in order to make sure those images were available again in the lower post. I apologize if it was not acceptable?

[seleka]

ack help- what are the links for the nasa live thing and the google hang out?

[loveoneanother]

ack help- what are the links for the nasa live thing and the google hang out?

Hi karika

I'm off to watch it via SLOOH now.....here try this :

http://events.slooh.com/

See you on the other side :)

[seleka]

It is broadcast live on the nasa station on dish network too. channel 286. the google hangout is https://plus.google.com/events/c8t7i5dbr1k50oq89giloiqe8rc but I don't understand what that is... I just have the tv on, but they are just talking... I want the cameras.... http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/# http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/beacon/beacon_secchi.shtml
http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/sccimages/
http://www.isoncampaign.org/Present

[McMaster]

Looks like ISON may have disintegrated and died. Let's not lose all hope yet, but might be we're not going to see a spectacular comet after all in christmas. :(

[seleka]

yeah its not looking good... it has disappeared from what I am gathering, right? Is there any camera anywhere showing it still exists in the expected trajectory? It burned up? Was there any camera showing its 'disintegration'?

[McMaster]

I don't think there was camera good enough to actually see the event. To me it looked like the nucleus faded away and tail followed soon after.

[greybeard]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comet-isons-survival-balance-brushes-sun-133627398.html

Comet Ison Grazes Sun: Astronomers Lose Track

Some astronomers following Comet Ison's close encounter with the Sun believe it may have met a fiery end.

The comet is believed to have reached the star at a distance of just 727,000 miles at 6.37pm UK time.

As it hurtled through space at speeds of 845,000mph, it was expected to be met with temperatures of around 2,700C (4,892F).

Some astronomers watching the approach said it may have broken apart, after a secondary trail of dense particles appeared.

Karl Battams, astrophysicist and computational scientist based at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, said: "It leaves me incredibly nervous.

"The secondary trail of what we believe is heavy and dense particles appeared earlier."

Officially labelled as Comet C/2012 S1, stargazers had been looking forward to Ison reaching its closest point to the Sun - also known as the perihelion.

Scientists were watching to see if the comet would disintegrate under the intense heat and gravitational forces of the Sun.

Comets are frozen balls of space dust left over from the formation of stars and planets more than four billion years ago.

When one comes close to a hot star, like the Sun, the icy core can melt.

"I think it has a maybe 30% chance to make it," comet expert Carey Lisse of the US Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory said earlier.

If Ison does survive, astronomers say it should be easily visible in the northern hemisphere early next month, just before sunrise and after sunset.

If the comet has already broken up, it should disintegrate completely as it makes its slingshot around the Sun.

However, this would provide an opportunity for scientists to see the insides of the comet, and better understand its composition, including clues about what material was present during the solar system's formation.

The comet was discovered last year by two amateur astronomers using Russia's International Scientific Optical Network , or Ison.

[seleka]

wow what a letdown.... its a space ship and its cloaked! It needed some energy from the sun? jk

best movie I see so far
http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/28/ahead_20131128_cor2_256.mpg

better http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/28/behind_20131128_cor2_512.mpg

[Hervé]

Gobble glob... ?


http://198.118.248.97/data/LATEST/current_c3small.gif

http://198.118.248.97/data/LATEST/current_c2small.gif

Look at the brightness decrease as Ison gets closer to the sun.

... and the brightnes increase as it gets away..

:jester:

:cheer2:

[Agape]

I think it's gone behind Sun and it will take few hours till it comes back :becky:

[MorningSong]

OMGosh! This is what they're saying over at spaceweather.com:


COMET ISON, R.I.P.: Evidence is mounting that comet ISON did not survive its brush with the sun earlier today. At 01:45 EST on Nov. 28th, Thanksgiving Day in the USA, the comet was supposed to pass a little more than a million miles above the surface of the sun. As a new movie from SOHO shows, the comet had already disintegrated. Click to set the scene in motion, and pay careful attention to the head of the comet:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/28nov13/rip_strip.gif

In the movie, Comet ISON is clearly falling apart as it approaches the sun. Researchers working with the Solar Dynamics Observatory report that they are saw nothing along the track that ISON was expected to follow through the sun's atmosphere.

An earlier movie from SOHO shows more of the comet's approach:

http://spaceweather.com/images2013/28nov13/sundiver_strip4.gif

The movie spans a day and a half period from Nov. 27th (01:41 UT) to 28th (15:22 UT). We see that Comet ISON brightened dramatically on Nov. 27th before fading on Nov. 28th. That brightening might have been the disintegration event, in which the comet cracked open and spilled its vaporizing contents into space.

There is still a slight chance that some fraction of Comet ISON has survived. (That would make ISON a headless comet--more appropriate for Halloween than Thanksgiving.) Stay tuned for more movies as we watch for debris emerging behind the occulting disk of SOHO coronagraphs.

[panopticon]

It appears parts of the comet may have survived...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BaL-7qZCcAAC3-D.png

[loveoneanother]

Ah, you got that one pan. I got that one too and this one (i tried inserting the first link as an image but it looked huge when i previewed it ) :

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/28/ahead/cor2/2048/20131128_203924_d7c2A.jpg

http://tau.rghost.ru/50513270/image.png

[panopticon]

Bgz8JHVgeb0

[loveoneanother]

What are we seeing here guys :confused:

http://sol24.net/wwv/data/c2_1024.jpg

[panopticon]

Looks like the dust left over from the disintegration of the comet.

[loveoneanother]

Certainly what Phil Plait thinks pan :rolleyes:

An explanation of the above image by one of the people, Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy, who was featured in the live NASA broadcast earlier :


UPDATE 3 (Nov. 28 at 20:30 UTC): The latest SOHO image I can grab (insert by me to point out he is referring to the above image only taken earlier in time) is from 19:48 UTC (2:48 EST) and it seems to show a little bit of ISON coming around the Sun. However, it once again appears to not be condensed, meaning it looks like debris smeared out along the comet's orbit. It looks to me that ISON, as a solid body, is no more. The next question is, when did the breakup actually occur? Was it it an all-at-once event, or did it break up over time? It may have happened before it even entered the SOHO field of view, and the pieces didn't disperse until after it got near the Sun this morning.]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/28/nasa_hangout_live_video_chat.html

[panopticon]

My reasoning is that the tail does not appear to be reforming in the correct orientation (away from the sun) and so I reckon we're only seeing dust because a more compact nucleus (or even segments) would not appear this way but remnant dust would.

[loveoneanother]

I bow down to your greater knowledge on these matters pan :hail:

I'm just burning my fingers on the keyboard trying to get over the disappointment of it all :(

BPearthwatch seems more 'optimistic' though that something more substantial has survived :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGvyNoVPDUc&feature=c4-overview&list=UUxz5R9YQMRW5QqElbAlMqRw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhHe8hLVQPc&feature=c4-overview&list=UUxz5R9YQMRW5QqElbAlMqRw

[loveoneanother]

Wow what a ride this comet has been giving me.....are they all like this :faint:

Here's an interesting movie :

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/28/ahead_20131128_cor2_512.mpg

[panopticon]

Wow what a ride this comet has been giving me.....are they all like this :faint:

Here's an interesting movie :

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2013/11/28/ahead_20131128_cor2_512.mpg

This one was a bit different as it had the potential to put on a really good show and for the first time there was a lot of instant data/images available to everyone around the world.

The way it works from my experience is:

Astronomers find comet.
Images get shown.
Group 1: Some people declare it's the end of the world/second coming/rapture imminent etc.
Group 2: Settle in to have a look at the images from various telescopes.
Group 3: Couldn't give a damn.
Then when nothing happens group 1 come up with excuses (wait for that over the next few days).
Meanwhile Group 2 talk about what was seen and how cool it was/wasn't.
Group 3 still don't give a damn.

:cool:

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Just appearing in SOHO's LASCO 3 now:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2013/c3/20131128/20131128_2218_c3_512.jpg

[apokalypse]

from GLP...guys saying Ison still alive and well.

[Hervé]

Pfoofff... 'l a eu chaud!


http://198.118.248.97/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif
LASCO/C2


But it looks like Ison has lost quite a few feathers on its close encounter with the sun...


http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c2/512/latest.jpg

http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/latest.jpg

[loveoneanother]

This is going to be a late night isn't it.....i'm proper 'cream-crackered' now :sleep:

http://skyweek.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/lastimg_c3.jpg

[panopticon]

This is going to be a late night isn't it.....i'm proper 'cream-crackered' now :sleep:


Hehehehe,

Speak for youreslf it's only 11:15am here and I'm just starting coffee #3 :P

[norman]

If it's taken a pasting from old father sun, it might just give us an extra special show on it's way back out into nowhere.

Fragmentation increases the surface areas and allows more of the stuff that we see in the sky to get out there.

Bet it don't fancy another belting like that :)

[thunder24]

Im sorry...
can you explain what "cream-crakered" means
This is going to be a late night isn't it.....i'm proper 'cream-crackered' now :sleep:

[naste.de.lumina]

I found this. Anyone else seen it?
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5480/11106507235_ec20b425d7_o.gif

[loveoneanother]

Im sorry...
can you explain what "cream-crakered" means

hehehe sorry about that.....here.....http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cre2.htm

:focus:

[panopticon]

Im sorry...
can you explain what "cream-crakered" means

Pommie rhyming slang for knackered. Same as an Australian saying 'I feel stuffed' or 'I'm buggered'.

FbOAawDT8VM

*snap* L1A Lol :)

[Wind]

How disappointed I was when I saw the news... I really hope that this isn't the end of ISON.

[Radi]

is nasa hiding something? :confused:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yKx6D_Rq7U

spaceweather :
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/28nov13/rip_anim2.gif?PHPSESSID=906upldp3m7bqhkag9j57e2vi4

:confused:

[Radi]

http://news.sky.com/story/1174976/comet-ison-fails-to-survive-solar-slingshot ????

[Wind]

"COMET ISON Survived Perihelion after losing brightness and apparent size just before its nearest approach of the Sun, a small portion of the comet appearing to have survived the round trip."

-i5RQZJcDak

[Camilo]

I just came across this information (regarding Ison) from a different perspective, which I resonate with, and it's worth to consider as a possibility.

This "Comet" is not a comet, it's a CONSCIOUS ENERGY FIELD OF LIGHT that has been sent by "CREATOR" as a "shot in the arm" to support people to be released from the ENSLAVEMENT / DOWN TRODDEN MATRIX -- to break through the very dense chaos energy of the DECEPTION Reality that has been built into the Matrix - usurping our FREE WILL and much more.

This energy field, is part of the Contingency Plan to support humanity to be able to release from the SUSPENDED ANIMATION that has been created through intense, ongoing timeline manipulation.

The reason this ENERGY FIELD OF LIGHT coming closest to the planet today and tomorrow is because, AMERICA - is in a mass consciousness of GRATITUDE as we celebrate Thanksgiving...this ENERGY of GRATITUDE is being utilized to SHIFT the vibratory field and frequency of the 3D matrix...JUST LIKE the cabal utilizes events such as the 2012 Madonna Super Bowl half time show, with 14 million viewers, unknowingly adding their energy to the Satanical ritual of that event...enough said for the moment...

BE GRATEFUL FOR THE DIVINE INTERVENTION THAT IS OCCURRING -- IT'S JUST-- AND I MEAN JUST THE BEGINNING!!

[panopticon]

"COMET ISON Survived Perihelion after losing brightness and apparent size just before its nearest approach of the Sun, a small portion of the comet appearing to have survived the round trip."


We'll have to wait and see, though the images in LASCO's C3 do seem to indicate that there's a remnant that may have survived.

The SDO images were a disappointment which indicated to me that it may have disintegrated prior to entering SDO's view of its perihelion.

So, maybe there was a tail disconnect and partial disintegration with only bits 'n pieces left over big enough to give the impression of a larger remnant mass than is really there.

To put it simply: I got no bloody idea.
It's fantastic ain't it! :whoo:

99G9uCMNLhU

[Ellisa]

The news is that the comet is believed to have been destroyed like "an ice cube on a barbecue"! It's melted!

I'm quite sad - I had been looking forward to seeing it.

[marlowe]

ISON is alive and well


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SO49ZfppKo

[panopticon]

I'm just going through the AIA high res (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/) (4096) SDO images for the period (it's painful) and so far have found no visual evidence of the comet. It is very disappointing, but there again I'm only a little way in! If anyone else reads about someone finding an image can they point me to the page please.

Cheers,
Pan

[seleka]

I'm just going through the AIA high res (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/) (4096) SDO images for the period (it's painful) and so far have found no visual evidence of the comet. It is very disappointing, but there again I'm only a little way in! If anyone else reads about someone finding an image can they point me to the page please.

Cheers,
Pan

Are the images progressing like they should, like with movement of the flares and gasses? In this video (http://youtu.be/7yKx6D_Rq7U) he shows the image we were all looking at during the live broadcast. I didn't put it together until I saw this video, but it makes zero sense that we would see it move in, and then not see it dissipate or show up at all.
Maybe NASA is not trying to fool us at all, however, maybe something interfered with the feed or the cameras... or maybe they just had some problems, they need some techies working there anyway from what I saw, the cheap earbuds, the clumsy mics, muted when they were on camera more than once.... so I could believe they just made an error and showed us all a static picture for an hour.

So are the images if looked at one by one changing as one would expect?

EDIT: I have never been to that site, but I did look at a suite of images (gold) and once they moved the camera in preparation, the images were static that I saw.
EDIT: just looked at red and they were not static... I have to go do housework. Good sleuthing!

[panopticon]

EDIT: just looked at red and they were not static... I have to go do housework. Good sleuthing!

Good-o. Don't have to upload images now. :)

[thunder24]

Ison is dead, long live ison

[panopticon]

Cool graphic from Spaceweather.com:

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/28nov13/rip_anim5.gif

http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/28nov13/rip_anim5.gif

-- Pan

[panopticon]

Hehehehe ;)

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/oort_cloud.png
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/oort_cloud.png

[seleka]

why is this one so blurry?

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t225/karika2007/activist/blurrysun.jpg

This image is from http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/ looking at frames in the gold.

Since I know so little about the subject, I will just ask, any chance this is blurry due to a passing tail? Even though we can't see it. I will go crazy if I keep looking at these little images... I like it after they are pieced into a movie. Does it only take a picture every 15 minutes, or is that one of the chosen settings to tweak? :dizzy: break

[loveoneanother]

Aah that's better, i needed that.....loverly little sleep i had there.....out like a light i was.....now, where are we at with all this ISON business :unsure:

Here's the latest blog for starters by Karl Battams, the NRL guy who was a co-host on the live NASA broadcast.

(I've done my best, while taking part in this thread, to be a good boy and stick to the scientific line but i have to admit i'm not a happy bunny at the moment. They, the scientists, need to come up with an explanation for the way all this ISON-watching has turned out. Presumably the best technology money can buy and they missed it ! Really ? Is that what we're saying here ? Astonishing. Simply astonishing :confused: )

Schrodingers Comet

submitted Thursday November 28th 2013

I'll just say this upfront right now: whatever you read in the following blog post, please feel free to assume it is completely incorrect and the truth is actually quite contrary to what I'm saying. It has been - and continues to be - one of those days.

So this will be a relatively brief blog post because we're up to our necks in media inquiries and attempting to do real science to figure out the mystery that is comet ISON, and Matthew and I are basically the only ones that have abandoned our loved ones on this US national Holiday and continued to work. Here's what we know so far:

After impressing us yesterday, comet ISON faded dramatically overnight, and left us with a comet with no apparent nucleus in the SOHO/LASCO C2 images. As the comet plunged through the solar atmosphere, and failed to put on a show in the SDO images, we understandably concluded that ISON had succumbed to its passage and died a fiery death. Except it didn't. Well, maybe...

After perihelion, a very faint smudge of dust appeared in the the LASCO C2 images along ISON's orbit. This surprised us a little, but we have seen puffs of dust from Sungrazer tails, so it didn't surprise us enormously and didn't change our diagnosis. We watched and waited for that dust trail to fade away. Except it didn't.

Now, in the latest LASCO C3 images, we are seeing something beginning to gradually brighten up again. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that there's a comet in the images!

Matthew and I are ripping our hair out right now as we know that so many people in the public, the media and in science teams want to know what's happened. We'd love to know that too! Right now, here's our working hypothesis:

As comet ISON plunged towards to the Sun, it began to fall apart, losing not giant fragments but at least a lot of reasonably sized chunks. There's evidence of very large dust in the form of that long thin tail we saw in the LASCO C2 images. Then, as ISON plunged through the corona, it continued to fall apart and vaporize, and lost its coma and tail completely just like Lovejoy did in 2011. (We have our theories as to why it didn't show up in the SDO images but that's not our story to tell - the SDO team will do that.) Then, what emerged from the Sun was a small but perhaps somewhat coherent nucleus, that has resumed emitting dust and gas for at least the time being. In essence, the tail is growing back, as Lovejoy's did.

So while our theory certainly has holes, right now it does appear that a least some small fraction of ISON has remained in one piece and is actively releasing material. We have no idea how big this nucleus is, if there is indeed one. If there is a nucleus, it is still too soon to tell how long it will survive. If it does survive for more than a few days, it is too soon to tell if the comet will be visible in the night sky. If it is visible in the night sky, it is too soon to say how bright it will be...

I think you get the picture, yes?

We have a whole new set of unknowns, and this ridiculous, crazy, dynamic and unpredictable object continues to amaze, astound and confuse us to no end. We ask that you please be patient with us for a couple of days as we analyze the data and try to work out what is happening. We realize that everyone now wants to know if it will be visible in the night sky, and how bright it might be. We really hate speculating right now but if someone were to force us into an answer, we would reluctantly say that at least some faint tail remnant should be visible in the coming week or so. But this is highly speculative so please don't take this too seriously just yet. We will absolutely post updated info here as soon as we're more confident, and I will of course continue blogging when I can in the meantime. Just be patient on this and the truth will unfold in time!

And I just want to end on this note: not long after comet ISON was discovered, it began to raise questions. Throughout this year, as many of you who have followed closely will appreciate, it has continued to confuse and surprise us. For the past few weeks, it has been particularly enigmatic and dynamic, in addition to being visually spectacular. This morning we thought it was dying, and hope was lost as it faded from sight. But like an icy phoenix, it has risen from the solar corona and - for a time at least - shines once more. This has unquestionably been the most extraordinary comet that Matthew and I, and likely many other astronomers, have ever witnessed. The universe is an amazing place and it has just amazed us again. This story isn't over yet, so don't stray too far from your computer for the next couple of days!

http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/schroedingers-comet

[Wind]

That bright spot above the Sun seems to be Ison and it indeed seems to be alive! Many people including the scientists at NASA (Never A Straight Answer) jumped the gun too early! :cool:

http://oi44.tinypic.com/2gsix02.jpg
mpPSDe1fk8Y

[loveoneanother]

I've been mindful of posting too many videos about ISON but i think this guy has been fairly consistent in getting the relevant information out.....imo :thumb:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjmahgVR9yw&feature=c4-overview&list=UUxz5R9YQMRW5QqElbAlMqRw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIj0tHXnEtQ&feature=c4-overview&list=UUxz5R9YQMRW5QqElbAlMqRw

[StandingWave]

I have been led to believe that a comet's tail points AWAY from the sun at all times - so what do we see here then? Is this an artefact of viewing position that makes the tail seem to stream out behind the nucleus regardless of its position relative to the sun? Any suggestions? I have never seen a comet leave such a long lasting trail behind it either - all the way around the sun!

[panopticon]

why is this one so blurry?

Probably the shot was taken while the satellite was re-positioning.


Does it only take a picture every 15 minutes

I dunno Karika. I think SDO's AIA is capable of around a shot a second and 1 representative shot is released for every 10 to 15 minutes to save on technical problems/storage to do with the website interface but I might well be wrong. The Sun moves really slow so usually it isn't a problem. My knowledge on this is fairly slim so, if no-one else pipes up, have a look around and see if you can find out what the truth is on the matter.

I've gone through the available HRes AIA and found nothing, nada, nought.

Reckon it wasn't in frame or maybe to small to pick up at the available resolutions, I dunno.

Just have to wait til the blokes and sheila's in charge of SDO give an excuse, erm, reason for it. :)

-- Pan