Comet ISON is plunging toward the sun and brightening as it heads for a perilous close encounter on Nov. 28th. Yesterday morning, with the "final countdown" clock at T-7 days, Juan Carlos Casado photographed the sundiver over the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands
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CHANCE OF FLARES: A cluster of active sunspots has just rotated off the Earthside of the sun. The remaining sunspots facing Earth are quiet, prompting NOAA forecasters to downgrade the chance of geoeffective flares. The odds of an X-class eruption today are no more than 1%. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
SOLAR FLEET PICKS UP COMET ISON: Because NASA's twin STEREO probes are designed to observe the sun, they can see sundiving comets even when the glare becomes intense. Yesterday, Comet ISON joined Earth, Mercury, and Comet Encke in the field of view of STEREO-A's Heliospheric Imager. Click on the image to view ISON's grand entrance:
"The dark 'clouds' of stuff you see coming from the right are density enhancements in the solar wind, and these are what are causing all the ripples you see in comet Encke's tail," explains Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign. "I can pretty much promise you that we're going to see ISON's tail doing that in a couple of day's time, but on a much larger scale!"
Battams points out another exciting development: Comet Encke and Comet ISON are converging for a photogenic close encounter. "No they're not going to hit each other - in reality they are millions of miles apart - but as seen from the STEREO-A spacecraft, they are going to get very close!" he says. "We are probably a couple of days away from seeing two comets almost side-by-side in that camera, with long tails flowing behind them in the solar wind. To say that such an image will be unprecedented is rather an understatement." Stay tuned for that.
Realtime Comet ISON Photo Gallery
ISON, THE DAWN COMET: Comet ISON is plunging toward the sun and brightening as it heads for a perilous close encounter on Nov. 28th. Yesterday morning, with the "final countdown" clock at T-7 days, Juan Carlos Casado photographed the sundiver over the Teide Observatory in the Canary Islands:
"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. Fortunately, NASA's fleet of solar spacecraft are able to follow the comet into the glare. NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft has already picked up Comet ISON. In the days ahead, STEREO-B, SOHO and the Solar Dynamics Observatory will join the hunt, providing continuous views all the way to perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on Nov. 28th.
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September 28, 2013, 03:00:58 PM