Comet C/2012 S1 - ISON

Revolucionar said:
I know very well what it is. The point is that NASA is now saying that the tail is only 3700 km wide, but it was 50000 km 8 months ago. If this is so, it should be a huge news item, because a comet shrank 12 times in 8 months. that, in itself, is very weird. A comets tail should be getting bigger as it makes its way towards the Sun, not smaller. If that isn't strange, I don't know what is.

But all that is only strange from the mainstream conventional "dirty snowball" comet theory. I guess what you're saying is that the mainstream "theory" should be questioned (at least) and this should be making big news because it goes against the theory?

Added: Just saw your post Laura. I think Revolucionar is getting at what I wrote above, but I'm not sure. Maybe he'll clarify?
 
Exactly my point. But on the other hand NASA WAS hiding something from the beginning: When this image came out they never published it's real size (the tail's size). Now they're going about like nothing happened, and saying it's only 3700 km wide (the tail). Also, this image was taken when ISON was around the orbit of Jupiter, and comets usually don't produce huge comma's and tails like that at such distances, so i wonder what the size of the nucleus in the image IS. The tail is 50000 km wide. That's a HUGE tail. It should be one of the biggest in centuries, right? If I were NASA, I'd report that. But from the get-go they were trying to "normalize" it. Don't know what to think of it exactly
 
This article has embedded links:

http://www.sott.net/article/266587-Comet-ISON-still-on-track-for-fall-spectacle

Remember when we, and everyone else in the media circuit, reported about how Comet ISON was fizzling out? Well, forget about it, because a very reliable source tells redOrbit that the comet is still on track to potentially provide a spectacular show in the night sky.

Comet ISON has been closely watched by several astronomers over the past year with great anticipation, but also with a little hesitation. It is a tricky balance, because comets have been notorious for disappointment in the past, particularly when media grabs hold of the subject and helps hype up events like this.

In August, Comet ISON emerged from behind the sun and was first picked up by amateur astronomer Bruce Gary. Reports said that according to Gary's observations, this comet was headed for disappointment, rather than the fall spectacle that news sources hyped it up to be. Since then, not a lot of new information has emerged about the comet from the media outlets, so redOrbit reached out to Karl Battams, an astrophysicist and computational scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory, to get an update about Comet ISON.

"The 'ISON is fizzling' thing was nonsense from the beginning, and should never have been reported without fact-checking," Battams told redOrbit. "It was an inflammatory press release that partially misquoted and misrepresented an already highly speculative research paper that had not even been peer reviewed."

The original press release announcing the comet had fizzled has since been taken offline, and Karl says the latest news about Comet ISON is all good news.

"So the actual latest is that Comet ISON continues to gradually brighten up, and is behaving almost exactly as we expect a dynamically new comet to behave. It's still in one piece, and is beginning to show an extended coma and increasingly lengthening tail. Bottom line is that it is progressing very nicely!"

Although the comet is still on track to provide a memorable backyard astronomy experience later this year, it still doesn't mean it will be the "Comet of the Century" as some news outlets have also reported.

"We [NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC)] have NEVER said it will be the comet of the century, and I don't know of any professional cometary scientists that have. That is entirely the media's term, and we've done our best to tone down that message at every opportunity," Battams, who is part of the CIOC, told redOrbit. "But what I will say is this: through our coordinated observing campaign we have assembled one of the broadest and most technologically advanced cometary observing campaigns in history, with an unprecedented armada of spacecraft readying to view the comet (or having viewed it already)."

"When ISON reaches perihelion, it should prove to be a spectacular object in many of our space-based satellites, and should return some wonderful images and movies," Karl added. "On top of this, the science return from such a breadth of observations will be extraordinary, regardless of how the comet 'performs'. Right now, ISON is not showing any signs that it's going to 'fizzle' out, and chances remain decent that we'll see a nice naked-eye comet in December."

Perihelion is the point in the orbit of a comet where it is closest to the sun. Part of the danger with this comet being new is that data is very limited, which means its brush with the sun could also be its demise.

"If it does survive perihelion - odds of which are roughly 50/50 though we're tentatively leaning towards a scenario where it will survive that close brush with the Sun - then it will hopefully be naked-eye visible in early December, and visible in telescopes and binoculars throughout most of December and perhaps into January," Battams told redOrbit.

He said ISON is already visible to good-sized backyard telescopes, and it will become more visible to even the backyard astronomer with smaller tools by mid-to-late October.

"However, it will then begin to get close to the Sun in the sky, and that makes it harder to view against an increasingly bright background sky. Of course, by that time we will have it in the sights of our telescopes on the NASA STEREO satellite, so we will have a space-based view of it 24/7 right through to perihelion and beyond (as long as it survives, of course!)."

Karl did warn that even with the positive news that Comet ISON is still traveling across the Solar System as predicted, you can never rule anything out.

"Of course, comets can and do surprise us, so we can never rule out an unexpected fragmentation or complete disruption of the comet. But right now it seems pretty happy," Battams told redOrbit.

For anyone wanting to find out more about observing the comet, Karl recommends people contact their local astronomy clubs for advice later in October and then throughout December. He also says those interested should check out the NASA Comet ISON Toolkit, the Hubble Space Telescope's Comet ISON blog, and the CIOC website, which contains blog posts, light curves and more.
 
I really don't understand why no one on this site is interested in the fact that NASA is obviously not disclosing the true size of this thing. They're turning of the Space fence, Deep impact is spiraling out of control at the very moment it was supposed to send images of ISON, they're showing us doctored parallax images of ISON for no obvious reason, they're giving us no scale of reference in their images (except for that SWIFT image which shows the comma to be 50000km wide), the U.S. Army is engaged in a number of courses for their soldiers dealing with civil disorder, Russian soldiers are coming to train in the U.S. on American weapons systems and so is the U.N., and it's all supposed to end on the 1st of October, the day when ISON is passing by Mars at a distance of 0.04 AU.
Something is going on and i think you should pay attention
 
Revolucionar said:
I really don't understand why no one on this site is interested in the fact that NASA is obviously not disclosing the true size of this thing. They're turning of the Space fence, Deep impact is spiraling out of control at the very moment it was supposed to send images of ISON, they're showing us doctored parallax images of ISON for no obvious reason, they're giving us no scale of reference in their images (except for that SWIFT image which shows the comma to be 50000km wide), the U.S. Army is engaged in a number of courses for their soldiers dealing with civil disorder, Russian soldiers are coming to train in the U.S. on American weapons systems and so is the U.N., and it's all supposed to end on the 1st of October, the day when ISON is passing by Mars at a distance of 0.04 AU.
Something is going on and i think you should pay attention

Maybe it's because one of the members here is an astronomer with access to inside info?

On the other hand, we understand all too well the tendency to get carried away by disinformation and run around yelling "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" which does nobody any good at all. You haven't given any sources for your claims. We have sources for our views - pretty good ones, too.
 
I've given a source, it's NASA! And I'm not saying that the sky is falling, or any of that crazy stuff, I'm just looking for a decent discussion into the fact that this thing was that big on the first image, and now we have no referenced images at all and they're saying it's way smaller than it was. All this other stuff seems to coincide in an interesting way and i think this warrants a better look. As for your sources, they're based on one man's claims. Can you show the data he used for making his analysis?
 
Revolucionar said:
And I'm not saying that the sky is falling, or any of that crazy stuff

So what is the relevance of the preparations of US and Russian armies with ISON. It seems that you think they may be related.
 
Well I don't know and I don't want to present myself as if I do, but things are kind of cooking altogether on our blue marble, and its all kind of coming together, so I guess that the PTB are in on something we aren't. Comets have always been seen as harbingers of doom, and we have a global conflict brewing, their having these trainings setup to finish when ISON is coming past Mars, the US Army has forbidden leave for soldiers until the end of November, I think. they're obviously preparing for something. NASA is quite incoherent about this ISON thing, and if it's possible that this object is much larger than they're saying it is, who knows what can happen. It's passing within 0.04 AU from Mars, and if it has an EM field far grater than we suspect, who knows what the effects on Mars, and the entire inner solar system may be. Don't know, just saying it warrants further discussion
 
Revolucionar said:
Well I don't know and I don't want to present myself as if I do, but things are kind of cooking altogether on our blue marble, and its all kind of coming together, so I guess that the PTB are in on something we aren't. Comets have always been seen as harbingers of doom, and we have a global conflict brewing, their having these trainings setup to finish when ISON is coming past Mars, the US Army has forbidden leave for soldiers until the end of November, I think. they're obviously preparing for something. NASA is quite incoherent about this ISON thing, and if it's possible that this object is much larger than they're saying it is, who knows what can happen. It's passing within 0.04 AU from Mars, and if it has an EM field far grater than we suspect, who knows what the effects on Mars, and the entire inner solar system may be. Don't know, just saying it warrants further discussion

Revolucionar I think it is important to realize you are 'excited' right now and this might hinder your ability to understand what others are saying. My advice is, "You may or may not be correct, some stuff you say might be true some might be false etc". The best way to find out is to wait and see. I believe ISON makes its close approach to Mars 1st Oct so it's not like years away, merely over a week away. After that it's well and truly in the inner solar system at which point we might all get a better idea of what it's all about.
 
I agree Luke, we'll wait and see. Not much we can do anyway. I'm actually "excited" because i have nobody to discuss this with, and the only place i thought it possible doesn't seem very conducive :( . In the end, all I'm saying is that it seems to me that NASA is hiding something and I don't know why. Is it because of the comet or is it something worse? :huh:
 
Revolucionar said:
I agree Luke, we'll wait and see. Not much we can do anyway. I'm actually "excited" because i have nobody to discuss this with, and the only place i thought it possible doesn't seem very conducive :( . In the end, all I'm saying is that it seems to me that NASA is hiding something and I don't know why. Is it because of the comet or is it something worse? :huh:

I wouldn't say we aren't conducive per se. I'd just say that you had some prior expectations of how we should engage in this discussion. It just so happens that sometimes things don't happen the way we expect. Maybe this is just an indication to take notice of the 'environment' and step outside our own minds and expectations at least for a moment, so that we can see ourself as part of something other rather than the usual image we have of ourselves as the 'center' of everything where we expect everything to revolve around what we think.

Regarding NASA, well, that is true - that they hide stuff, it's not like they are dumb e.g. regarding electrical phenomena, more likely they are just liars. Also it's true that a lot of things are scheduled to line up with when ISON will be in the inner solar system. It is hard to say exactly why this is. Unless you have some sort of time machine to step into the future and see exactly what will happen or some kind of way to see exactly why certain things are happening (e.g. drills, rumors of war etc), it's hard to be totally certain of anything and what precisely they are connected to in the grand picture.

In the end, ISON is knocking on the door and we'll all have our curiosities well and truly satisfied as it makes its journey in the inner solar system

Lastly, I believe comet euphoria is a thing to watch out for when it comes to your own 'excitability' about comets. I think this is like a documented thing that sweeps across the population and might say more about the people than the actual comet.

In a more practical sense, if you will make assertions, it helps to point out your sources, give links etc. This enables others to engage with you in a more fruitful way as they will see what you are referring to. Just saying 'NASA said such and such etc' without giving links isn't conducive to the sort of discussion you want.
 
Revolucionar said:
I agree Luke, we'll wait and see. Not much we can do anyway. I'm actually "excited" because i have nobody to discuss this with, and the only place i thought it possible doesn't seem very conducive :( . In the end, all I'm saying is that it seems to me that NASA is hiding something and I don't know why. Is it because of the comet or is it something worse? :huh:

NASA is hiding plenty and we've been keeping an eye on it for awhile. The main thing they are hiding is the increasing fireball flux which is getting difficult to hide. They can't hide things about comets very much because there are thousands of amateurs with their telescopes trained on it.

Read my comet series on the left menu bar on sott and then my latest book: "Comets and the Horns of Moses". Yeah, something big is going on, but it probably isn't anything as simple as a comet that you can SEE. It's what we canNOT see that is the problem.
 
Revolucionar said:
I agree Luke, we'll wait and see. Not much we can do anyway. I'm actually "excited" because i have nobody to discuss this with, and the only place i thought it possible doesn't seem very conducive :( . In the end, all I'm saying is that it seems to me that NASA is hiding something and I don't know why. Is it because of the comet or is it something worse? :huh:

Well, it is likely NASA is hiding many things, and has been for years and years. :D You being excited is certainly understandable though you should know this forum is based on, among other things, solid research for discussion purposes. Unfortunately, since mainstream scientists are being told not to talk or they may end up 'suicided', it's likely we won't know anything (whatever that 'anything' may be) is coming until it's too late.

Speaking of hiding something:

http://www.sott.net/article/266311-Americas-history-of-chemical-weapons-experiments-against-its-own-people-Over-4000-radiation-experiments-killed-or-poisoned-hundreds-of-thousands-of-citizens

http://www.sott.net/article/266610-Declassified-1961-Pentagon-document-US-came-within-hairs-breath-of-detonating-atomic-bomb-260-times-more-powerful-than-Hiroshima-bomb-over-North-Carolina
 
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