Comet C/2012 S1 - ISON

[Laura]

Funny they declared it gone when clearly not enough time has passed to make that call.

That's what I thought. And now they have egg on their faces. Spaceweather writes:

Karl Battams of NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign says, "[colleague] Matthew Knight 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 long thin tail we saw in the [SOHO coronagraph] images. Then, as ISON plunged through the corona, it continued to fall apart and vaporize, losing its coma and tail completely just like sungrazing Comet Lovejoy did in 2011. 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."

Battams emphasizes that it is too soon to tell how big the remnant nucleus is or how bright the resurgent comet will ultimately become. "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."

Of course, the answers are staring them in the face: 1) it's not a "dirty snowball" and 2) "it's an electrical phenomenon".

 

[Vulcan59]

Here is an image of ISON's perihelion. :)

 

[elle]

Amazing! Now I'm wondering whats the agenda next since people it's getting really nervous about Ison in direct collision with earth.Other claiming Ison being a mother ship full of extraterrestrial beings plus the claiming about Ison's " the zombie comet" are they going to create generalize fear out of this to I dont know, break down the financial system? Or are they going to call it dead and hide the information...what to expect?

 

[The Mechanic]

Amazing! Now I'm wondering whats the agenda next since people it's getting really nervous about Ison in direct collision with earth.Other claiming Ison being a mother ship full of extraterrestrial beings plus the claiming about Ison's " the zombie comet" are they going to create generalize fear out of this to I dont know, break down the financial system? Or are they going to call it dead and hide the information...what to expect?

Ison is not on a collision course with Earth, but oh boy, the internet is buzzing with some weird stories (as with almost every comet, you may notice). The whole mother-ship-full-off-extraterrestrials talk is of course, BS, but hey, you cannot prove a negative so that's why these stories keep persisting. And I know a few other comets have been said to be mother ships in the past, one being Elenin. In cases like these it's always best to keep to the facts, and perhaps create a working theory that includes all those facts. At least that's far more fruitful (and fun!) than reading stories people just pull out of their hat.

By they way Vulcan59, that's a beautiful animation, thanks for posting.

 

[mkrnhr]

Ison is not on a collision course with Earth, but oh boy, the internet is buzzing with some weird stories (as with almost every comet, you may notice). The whole mother-ship-full-off-extraterrestrials talk is of course, BS, but hey, you cannot prove a negative so that's why these stories keep persisting. And I know a few other comets have been said to be mother ships in the past, one being Elenin. In cases like these it's always best to keep to the facts, and perhaps create a working theory that includes all those facts. At least that's far more fruitful (and fun!) than reading stories people just pull out of their hat.

And yet, what really happened is far far more interesting than all those silly stories of mother ships and so forth.

 

[rise]

At that distance, it reached temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit(2,760 degrees Celsius) - hot enough to vaporize not just ices in the comet's body, but dust and rock as well.

What is the type of metal suggested by the Cs that comets are made of? Nickel and Cobalt? I'm having a hard time finding the original reference. 2700C is very hot and checking online for metals that can survive that temperature there does not seem to be that many... even steel would probably melt. Tungsten is apparently around ~3000C. I suppose the size of the comet needs to be taken into consideration because if it isn't being heated at 2700C for very long then perhaps the core would remain cool... I don't really know.

This is all very fascinating to watch.

 

[elle]

Amazing! Now I'm wondering whats the agenda next since people it's getting really nervous about Ison in direct collision with earth.Other claiming Ison being a mother ship full of extraterrestrial beings plus the claiming about Ison's " the zombie comet" are they going to create generalize fear out of this to I dont know, break down the financial system? Or are they going to call it dead and hide the information...what to expect?

Ison is not on a collision course with Earth, but oh boy, the internet is buzzing with some weird stories (as with almost every comet, you may notice). The whole mother-ship-full-off-extraterrestrials talk is of course, BS, but hey, you cannot prove a negative so that's why these stories keep persisting. And I know a few other comets have been said to be mother ships in the past, one being Elenin. In cases like these it's always best to keep to the facts, and perhaps create a working theory that includes all those facts. At least that's far more fruitful (and fun!) than reading stories people just pull out of their hat.

By they way Vulcan59, that's a beautiful animation, thanks for posting.

You are absolutely right Mr.Mechanic.I haven't seeing that way.Thanks for the insight.

 

[seiw83]

on this soho pict we cleary see dust from comet. It has fallen apart partly. What will happen to this dust? It is great question. If nucleus is small and we have a cloud of smaler rocks around it then we have hundreads or mayby thousands smaller rock on different trajetories. Some of them might be on collision path to earth.

 

[jupiterbeings]

Check out the latest fireball reports coming in at the AMS, they seem to be increasing in the last few days and getting more spectacular if you read some of the details.

http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/fireball/browse_reports?report_status=pending

 

[jupiterbeings]

possible trajectory change for ISON here.....IF correct.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ki9CjE1kDA

 

[Laura]

possible trajectory change for ISON here.....IF correct.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ki9CjE1kDA

Any way we can compare that to the original trajectory?

 

[Cosmos]

possible trajectory change for ISON here.....IF correct.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ki9CjE1kDA

Any way we can compare that to the original trajectory?

I think that one is far to simplistic to give us any real clue on original or the current trajectory.

 

[seiw83]

It is important movie. We see cme at 00:18 and at 8 18 we can see comet debris trail. It could be pushed toward earth.

 

[mkrnhr]

This is the projected positions of the comet in the field of view of SOHO. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I found it.

Added: Here: _http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/comet_ison/

 

[jupiterbeings]

Latest Lasco C3 image shows Ison maybe fading.