Hubble Telescope Captures Image of Comet ISON C/2012 S1

Hubble Telescope Captures Image of Comet ISON

by Nancy Atkinson on April 23, 2013

Here’s our first good look at Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON. The Hubble Space Telescope captured this shot on April 10, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter’s orbit at a distance of 634 million kilometers (394 million miles) from Earth. Later this year, this comet could become a brilliant object in the sky, perhaps 10 times brighter than Venus.

The comet’s dusty coma, or head of the comet, is approximately 5,000 km (3,100 miles) across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 92,000 km (57,000 miles), far beyond Hubble’s field of view.

Read more: www.universetoday.com...


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Here is some two animations from Hubble's images of the comet ISON C/2012 S1 ..

h.dropcanvas.com...

h.dropcanvas.com...

Mar 16, 2013 ObservatorioYunquera

Man I can't wait... hope it pans out nothing short of spectacular!!

But I gotta wait...

Thanx for posting... SnF

How beautiful
Thank you for the viewing.

reply to post by MariaLida


Thank you for a brilliant post !

Here is some interesting info about ISON ..

Comet C/2012 S1 ISON & Meteor Shower

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Someone's had their hand in the cookie jar again. F606W is the broadband V filter, it's actually just a greyscale image. Someone added the blue color in post processing to make it look prettier. Interestingly, they did use a blue color filter for some of the shots, but they don't mention that in the heading of the photo, just the F606W filter (they didn't use any other filters). I only used the 272 second exposure F606W images in my processing of the data as well; the blue filtered images are much dimmer than the broadband filtered images and I wasn't sure it wouldn't degrade the signal/noise ratio (double negative, I know).
www.abovetopsecret.com...
I wonder now if I added those blue filtered images as just a chromatic blue channel and left the red and green channels blank with the V filtered image as luminance what I might get as a result. I might have to revisit this data.

reply to post by MariaLida


SnF nice share MariaLida it will be an interesting EA*RTH & .. Observation thanks for the update

NAMASTE
LOVE LIGHT ETERNIA*******

Originally posted by ngchunter
Someone's had their hand in the cookie jar again. F606W is the broadband V filter, it's actually just a greyscale image. Someone added the blue color in post processing to make it look prettier. Interestingly, they did use a blue color filter for some of the shots, but they don't mention that in the heading of the photo, just the F606W filter (they didn't use any other filters). I only used the 272 second exposure F606W images in my processing of the data as well; the blue filtered images are much dimmer than the broadband filtered images and I wasn't sure it wouldn't degrade the signal/noise ratio (double negative, I know).
www.abovetopsecret.com...
I wonder now if I added those blue filtered images as just a chromatic blue channel and left the red and green channels blank with the V filtered image as luminance what I might get as a result. I might have to revisit this data.

edit on 23-4-2013 by ngchunter because: (no reason given)

Yap NASA

This image was taken in visible light. The blue false color was added to bring out details in the comet structure.

www.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by MariaLida
Here is some two animations from Hubble's images of the comet ISON C/2012 S1 ..

h.dropcanvas.com...

h.dropcanvas.com...

I know you probably didn't know it was me because I go by a different screen name at the place where you found those, but those are actually my work. I don't mind you re-posting them, but please give me credit when you do.

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by MariaLida
Here is some two animations from Hubble's images of the comet ISON C/2012 S1 ..

h.dropcanvas.com...

h.dropcanvas.com...

I know you probably didn't know it was me because I go by a different screen name at the place where you found those, but those are actually my work. I don't mind you re-posting them, but please give me credit when you do.

Yes I know you make this animations ..



Anyway it's nice one ..

Originally posted by MariaLida
Yap NASA

This image was taken in visible light. The blue false color was added to bring out details in the comet structure.

www.nasa.gov...

edit on 23-4-2013 by MariaLida because: (no reason given)

Well at least they explicitly stated it. I'll give them credit for that, but I'm not really buying the reasoning. That's a thinly-veiled excuse to make the image "prettier" for public consumption. If they wanted to bring out faint details in the structure they should have made a negative version of the image - that's a very old way of presenting faint details in astronomical images, not adding arbitrary false color. Heck, even a rotational gradient filter would have been a more standard way of bringing out hidden details in the coma's structure (though given the wide time spacing between exposures made on different orbits that option limits which exposures they can use together without generating false artifacts). Those methods wouldn't necessarily make the image "pretty" to the general public though, which is why they simply colorized it instead.

I know they're a government agency so they have to play to the public and everything, but I really hate when NASA goes out of its way to try to do something like this to make their data more in line with what lay people expect. Lay people don't expect that the best astronomical CCDs in the world are greyscale CCDs and that not every study requires color data. I would rather they just present the data as it is rather than continue to placate false preconceived notions.

reply to post by MariaLida


Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) Facebook Page - facebook.com...

Blue Star if I ever saw one...

2nd

Originally posted by Aqualung2012
Blue Star if I ever saw one...

2nd

Don't be deceived, to others its a red star with about 200,000,000 million devils running around waiting to get a bit closer so they can consume us all and turn our planet into cybertron.

reply to post by DarknStormy


Really? I don't think anybody thinks that.

I'm excited for this event.

I'm curious about the comets "dust coma", as they called it. Is there any evidence that this might be an electrical (plasma?) phenomenon and not merely comet dust and water vapor. I'm getting at the electric universe theory and the idea that there are no isolated islands in space and everything is connected via electromagnetic fields.

Seems like the dust cloud would have to be pretty thick to reflect all that light. Wouldn't the volume of dust released by the comet during its many approaches significantly reduce the comets itself to nothing.

Would anyone be so kind as to shed some light on this?

Originally posted by Aqualung2012
reply to post by DarknStormy

 

Really? I don't think anybody thinks that.

Sorry, didn't realise you were a hardliner without a sense of humour, my mistake.

Originally posted by Aqualung2012
Blue Star if I ever saw one...

2nd

You do realize the blue color was added artificially and it's really just a greyscale image, right?

If you need to scare up some prophecy
before Isons arrival in Nov. you'd have to blue filter it.
A Hopi prophecy of a Red Cachina (Alderban) and a Gray Cachina (ISON)
won't fly.