Spitzer Sees Long Tail, Strong Gas Emissions From Comet ISON

It looks like Comet ISON is heating up!

Although the comet is behind the sun now – not visible from Earth – a space telescope has seen dust and carbon dioxide steadily “fizzing” away from it, in a tail about 186,400 miles long.

Comet ISON was about 312 million miles from the Sun, 3.35 times farther than Earth, when the observations were made.

Comet ISON (officially known as C/2012 S1) is less than 3 miles in diameter, about the size of a small mountain, and weighs between 7 billion and 7 trillion pounds. Because the comet is still very far away, its true size and density have not been determined accurately. Like all comets, ISON is a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide. These are some of the fundamental building blocks which, scientists believe, led to the formation of the planets 4.5 billion years ago.

Article Link @EarthSky.org

It looks like Comet ISON is behaving as predicted and should put on quite a show from November thru January. It IS a little strange that exactly 1 year after December 21st, 2012 there WILL be a GREAT COMET (the great purifier) in our night & day skies, visible to ALL! Kinda makes ya think...did we forget to count that "zero"

ISON will probably go down as the most photographed Comet in History.

Most people aren't even aware that ISON is coming and will be visible in daylight. There's going to be a lot of unstable people that are going to FREAK OUT while ISON is visible.

...when the comet shall pass!

120 million pounds of dust is estimated coming off this comet every 24 hours! That should put on a pretty good meteor shower if we're lucky enough to encounter the debris field. I think I read somewhere that there is a good chance of that happening.

reply to post by Phantasm


Good catch and agreed about people both not knowing this is coming for the most part...and the fact they will flip their lids like a cartoon in many cases.

After the endless hysteria of Elenin in 2011? I've kept to myself on ISON. Watching it make it's way ever closer by the day ...but generally? No comment, lest we start the fear fest early. I think we'll be so sick of ISON threads by the time this fades back into Deep Space, we'll all be ready to do nasty things to whomever discovered the thing. lol..

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Definitely wrabbit. We will have had our fill of all things ISON before all is said and done. ATS staff should be proactive and just start an ISON forum now. In fact I predict this very thread will spawn a few spin-offs by days end about how this thing is a harbinger of death and destruction.

Let the doom porn begin!!

" Like all comets, ISON is a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide"

Let's keep our minds active shall we? The deep impact mission showed strong evidence that at least one comet was solid rock.

This will be a great one. It's never been to the inner solar system and it's going to graze the solar corona. So will a dirty snowball survive? How much mass and volume should a dirty snowball lose after grazing the solar corona which is roughly a million degrees F? Stay tuned.

Originally posted by InverseLookingGlass
The deep impact mission showed strong evidence that at least one comet was solid rock.

Nope. "Analysis of data from the Swift X-ray telescope showed that the comet continued outgassing from the impact for 13 days, with a peak five days after impact. A total of 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) of water and between 10 and 25 million kilograms (22 and 55 million pounds) of dust were lost from the impact." Source

Impactor ejects mighty water mass - news.bbc.co.uk...

But I agree that the "dirty snowball" is a bad phrase to use in science, and it makes the public think of fluffy wet things. Comets are rocky bodies with a substential ice content (and "ice" in astronomical terms means frozen volatiles, like water, methane, ammonia, CO2, etc.) Many asteroids in the Solar System are "spent" comets.

Like all comets, ISON is a dirty snowball made up of dust and [color=gold] frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide.

If they are gasses then where is the spectroscopy?

I'm not taking their word for it,
I'm sick of taking their word for it,

It's not like we-mere-mortals can't understand a spectragraph.
The technology goes back to 1890.

And WTF do they mean by water.
Are they using the fuzzy definition where it actually means frozen methane, that is turned to gas, so that it was never technically water(H2O) but was (CH4)?

I'm mean they haven't said a damn thing really have they.


I think we would be better off looking at the possible 333 year periodicity of this thing,
than reading anything the Hubble custodians are allowed to say about it.
Bunch janitors with forked tongues.


Mike

Originally posted by wildespace

(and "ice" in astronomical terms means frozen volatiles, like water, methane, ammonia, CO2, etc.)

Yeah, sure it does.

And if they would release the spectrograph,
I wouldn't have to take their waffling definitions
as I could determine the elements present for myself.

I mean what is this, freaking classified need to know.

Hubble's sensitive new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), the only one of its kind

WHERE ARE THE GORRAM SPECTROGRAPHS?


Mike




Nasa either get off of the data or stfu with your conclusions.
Without verification it is not science.

reply to post by Phantasm


How fast is this thing travelling to make it from behind the sun to visible in our daytime skies in a few months? I apologize I am completely ignorant but am fascinated by the topic!

How close does it have to be to be seen in our daytime skies? I guess this would give me better perspective on distance and speed.

Nice to see you ISON .
Although I plan on simply taking in the beauty of your passing
I think it's important for you to know that;

You are going to be responsible for thousands of doom blog entries.
Thousands of rapture stories.
Thousands of "its the Apocalypse for sure this time" cries.
And probably THE SIGN, that many are looking for, to answer numerous internal questions.
As well as the thousands of replies from people simply trying to calm nervous minds down.
So thanks a lot.
You better be beautiful.

Originally posted by Chrisfishenstein
reply to post by Phantasm

 

How fast is this thing travelling to make it from behind the sun to visible in our daytime skies in a few months? I apologize I am completely ignorant but am fascinated by the topic!

How close does it have to be to be seen in our daytime skies? I guess this would give me better perspective on distance and speed.

It will whip around the sun at approximately 425,000 mph and then head back into space passing our planet on its way, allowing us to see it in all its finery.

Comet ISON will come within 800,000 miles (1.2 million km) of our sun’s surface on November 28. ISON might emerge from perihelion bright enough to see easily with the eye, with a long comet tail that stretches across a quarter of the sky. Comets are notoriously unpredictable. Still, this comet is one you’ll want to watch.

How far from Earth will it be when it passes by ?

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Not only that but the electric universe video (on the electric comets) makes other good scientific observations (even if one does not subscribe to the theory).

PS: I was extremely PO when the electric comet video was pulled out of youtube (as I hadn't yet seen it in full) due to a copyright complain from the observatory that is publicly funded. There is another uploaded copy available (if you are interested in comets one should at least take a look at it)

reply to post by mikegrouchy


Whoa, who rattled your cage? I'm sure the data, including spetrography, is available to those who want it. Try this: archive.spitzer.caltech.edu... or just contact Spitzer team directly.

By the way, other astronomers, and even amateur astronomers, conduct spectroscopy of comets. You could get in touch with them and ask for spectroscopic measurements of ISON. iopscience.iop.org...

Originally posted by blackmetalmist
How far from Earth will it be when it passes by ?

If it survives a Thanksgiving Day close swing around the Sun, ISON will make its closest approach to Earth on December 26th, 2013. But it will likely pass a safe 63 million km from Earth.

New info:
CometISON News
Discovery.com
and just for some thought...


I posted this on another ISON thread:

Originally posted by whatnext21
I would be more inclined to be concerned about a meteor storm from the debris in the tail. NASA says it will be dust and provide us with nothing more than a dusting and an increase of noctilucient clouds. This comet is estimated to be 5km or 3mi across.
American Meteor Society

Meteor storms are generally caused by young meteor streams, in which the majority of the streams’ mass is still concentrated along that portion of the orbit occupied by the parent comet. Meteor storms occur when the Earth crosses the orbit of the meteor stream, at the same time that the main mass of the young meteor stream is crossing the orbit of the Earth. For streams with a low potential for orbital perturbation, this event may occur on a periodic basis, generally at around the same time that the parent comet becomes visible in the inner solar system. Streams which tend to undergo frequent orbital perturbations may only cause infrequent and rare storms, some never occurring again. To make the possibility even more remote, these streams also tend to be very narrow, with the Earth taking only a few hours to cross the concentrated portion of the streams’ path. Being on the right side of the globe, under good weather, on the right night is very important toward seeing these events.

NASA reports that:

When Earth passes through the debris stream, we will encounter two populations of comet dust. One swarm of dust will be following the Comet ISON into the sun. Another swarm will be moving in the opposite direction, pushed away from the sun by solar radiation pressure. The streams will pepper opposite sides of Earth simultaneously.

Info
The orbit of ISON crosses our ecliptic on its way into the sun and we pass the same spot in mid-January which is when we will encounter any dust or debris in the tail

Sun Diving Comets
A comet similar to ISON size, not sure of its orbit:

In 1965, Comet Ikeya-Seki appeared out of nowhere, dove toward the sun and skimmed the surface from a height of only about 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers). Since Ikeya-Seki's nucleus is relatively large (about 3 miles or 5 km wide), it survived the encounter and emerged as one of the brightest comets of the past thousand years.

Back in December 2011 an unusual Cosmic Storm was observed near the sun when the sun was pelted with sundiving comets. This led the scientists to believe that a much larger object was to come, potentially visible to the naked eye.

"We have not seen a really big Kreutz comet in the era of space-based coronagraphs," Knight said. "SOHO wasn't around in 1965 to record how many little comets dove into the sun before Ikeya-Seki. It might be 200 comets per year – or it could be 1,000. Without more information, we can't know for sure how soon we might be privileged to see one of the real monsters."

Fall of a Thousand Suns See this link for good info on ISON among others

The tail grew to be 70,000,000 miles (113,000,000 km) long – two-thirds of the distance between Earth and the Sun. It was the fourth longest tail in recorded history—behind the Great Comets of 1680, 1811 and 1843. Its closest approach to Earth was roughly 80,000,000 miles (129,000,000 km). During its close encounterwith the Sun, Comet Ikeya-Seki was observed breaking into three pieces. They were named C/1965 S1, C/1965 S1-A and C/1965 S1-B.

This comet passed between earth and mars and will not return until 2842

And what would the dust that we are supposed to see from this comet do to our already over productive clouds? Comet dust helps in the formation of rain clouds. More floods?

Above Top Secret

edit on 7/24/2013 by whatnext21 because: (no reason given)

I really do hope we get a nice light show from ISON, without any meteor showers or anything like that. Haha.

It will be awesome to see, unless of course it breaks up than we may not see anything.
So I am still anticipating.

And yes ever since I heard about this comet when it was first announced last year, I have thought it was very strange and coincidental in relation to the 2012 thing and it caused me to think those guys who said 2013 is the real year were probably right if those mythologies have any reality behind them at all in the first place.

Long Tail, Strong Gas Emissions ........Sounds like my old dog

Originally posted by mikegrouchy

Like all comets, ISON is a dirty snowball made up of dust and [color=gold] frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide.

If they are gasses then where is the spectroscopy?

I'm not taking their word for it,
I'm sick of taking their word for it,

It's not like we-mere-mortals can't understand a spectragraph.
The technology goes back to 1890.

And WTF do they mean by water.
Are they using the fuzzy definition where it actually means frozen methane, that is turned to gas, so that it was never technically water(H2O) but was (CH4)?

I'm mean they haven't said a damn thing really have they.


I think we would be better off looking at the possible 333 year periodicity of this thing,
than reading anything the Hubble custodians are allowed to say about it.
Bunch janitors with forked tongues.

Mike

Mike--then don't take their word for it. Do your own spectroscopy -- should be big/bright enough for that.

Small telescope w/ the right filters -- there will be thousands of amatuer astronomers looking at it, in different sprectra--should be all you need.

i get annoyed when people say (as you did) "I'm not going to take their word for it" but don't want to put in the effort to figure it out themselves when it is easly doable.

TD

Originally posted by Phantasm
Most people aren't even aware that ISON is coming and will be visible in daylight. There's going to be a lot of unstable people that are going to FREAK OUT while ISON is visible.

Disagree.
No freaking out will happen.

ISON will only be visible in daylight for a matter of hours as it passes past perihelion, the closest point in its orbit to the sun. At that time, as seen from earth, the comet will be only about 1 degree away from the sun. It may be visible, but with the sun right next to it, you're going to have to TRY to see it. People wont be spotting it accidentally.

And in any case, even if it gets visible it will only be the nucleus part, not the tail. Like a fuzzy Venus.

What are the chances that the suns gravitational pull will affect its orbit as it passes the sun?

i.e. ISON is planned to fly past earth 65million km away (for example), but after passing the sun that distances halves.....

Is that possible?

Will it pass close enough to the sun for the sun to pull it in? i.e. impact with sun.