Comet ISON News and Links - 2013

[Guest]

So where can you watch comet ISON during perihelion??? There are many sites where you can watch the data roll in. Here are the ones I know about.

SDO has a dedicated page, it will update every 5 min with new data:
http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Here is a link to the SOHO ISON page. It is not as dynamic as the SDO one, but they have now provided links to the latest data.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/index.html/

Here is the STEREO page about ISON. Sadly though the page provides no links to live data.
http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/comet_ison/

But, here is that link. Here you can select which instrument you want to view, then the date. You will then be given all the available images for the selected day.
http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/sccimages/

[william-kowalczyk]

Great Links MG. Thanks for posting.

Latest word is that ISON may have broken up .

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/Comet-ISON-Becomes-a-Nail-Biter-233327541.html

More from sky and tel...

UPDATES:

November 26: More uncertainty! Mixed news today. On the one hand, longtime comet expert Jakub Czerny posted:

No good news from [the] STEREO-A [spacecraft imaging the comet; see Nov. 25 below]. Matthew Knight has sent me his photometry of spacecraft images to 15h UT Nov. 25. After a strong fade, the comet has started gaining brightness again, unfortunately with a speed far below (n=0.66) the brightening for a simple reflecting body (n=2).
In other words, the comet's head was physically dwindling when it should have been growing like crazy. Czerny notes that this is consistent with no nucleus — no dirty iceball — remaining in the comet's head, just a slowly dissipating swarm of mostly inactive rubble.

But now, more recent images from STEREO-A show ISON perking up and looking more back on track. For instance this pic taken a few hours ago, at 12:49 November 26th UT. ISON is the obvious comet; Encke is lower left of it. More.

Some comets dwindle and burst often. "This is a dynamic situation," said Karl Battams (Naval Research Laboratory) at a 1 p.m. NASA press conference. "We don't have any past experience to predict what's going to happen to this object."

Watch this space.

P. S.: This evening starting at 9 p.m. EST, five of the comet scientists working on ISON will take your questions on a reddit Ask Me Anything.

[william-kowalczyk]

From the SECCHI link you provided MG; HI STARS A from today:

[william-kowalczyk]

On the SECCHI site:

You can run thru the PGNs in a time laps from today on the top right of the display after you click on the first image on the left: http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/sccimages/index.php?subdir=HI_SREM_A/20131126/512&nothumb=0

You can see the solar wind really taking its toll...

[william-kowalczyk]

I was using the SECCHI movie tool and this set up was VERYinteresting to watch:

Goto to the following link http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=js_secchi_day_png

...and enter the following movie parameters:

Telescope: HI1_STARS or HI1_SREM
Observatory: SECCHI-A
Image Size: 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024 (if you have the gear for it - HI1_STARS only)
Date: 20131121
Duration (Days): 06

Great movies of ISON for the past several days. Certainly getting brighter at the end of the sequence, but that could be for several reasons. HI1_SREM show a dense chunk of debris coming of ISON and slowly dissipating in the wind; probably attributable to the early flare up.

I bet this fella makes it thru. I always root for the under dog. There I said it.

[Guest]

No problem! Im with you im hoping it survives the trip. Although This just in, CME is possible headed toward ISON, which is not visible in SOHO C3.

[william-kowalczyk]

That will be a good one to watch in the HI1_SREM next day or so when the files are down. I like to keep an eye on the C3 using the Solar Monitor app for the iPhone. Thanks for the heads up! Don't forget the jhelioviewer so you can cut a video of the approach.

[william-kowalczyk]

Sungrazer Comets reporting ISON is now about Mag +1

[william-kowalczyk]

Latest from the CIOC:

We hope you're enjoying this roller-coaster of a ride?! When we last spoke we reported on a dramatic increase in dust production and simultaneous drop in molecular emission, potentially indicative of a catastrophic breakup of the comet's nucleus.

That situation may now have changed. (We literally cut-and-pasted that sentence from the last update...)

Now that we have observations of the comet in the NASA STEREO instruments and, more recently, the ESA/NASA SOHO LASCO C3 instrument, CIOC team member Matthew Knight has been able to start recording photometry of the comet. His results seem to imply that the comet may have experienced an outburst during the (approximate) period Nov 21 - 23 with corresponding brightness increase, followed by a leveling off and then dropping back down to "pre-outburst" levels. Since entering the LASCO C3 field of view, comet ISON has increased by at least a factor of four, and indications are it may be closer to a factor of ten. In the most recently available images, the comet appears to be around magnitude +0.5.

[william-kowalczyk]

...and from the Karl's twitter feed: "Oh yeah! Conservatively #ISON is mag -0.5 right now but I suspect it's close to -1 or so..."