We discussed the ISON ISOFF again nature of comet ISON in this WUWT thread, now it looks like ISOFF again.
From NASA’s Spaceweather.com (h/t Fernando): Comet ISON is fading fast as it recedes from the sun. Whatever piece of the comet survived the Thanksgiving flyby of the sun is now dissipating in a cloud of dust. (animation follows)
(Note: The animation may take a minute or more to load, based on your Internet connection speed.) Click to view a 3-day movie centered on perihelion (closest approach to the sun):
This development makes it unlikely that Comet ISON will put on a good show after it exits the glare of the sun in early December. Experienced astro-photographers might be able to capture the comet’s fading “ghost” in the pre-dawn sky, but a naked-eye spectacle can be ruled out.
On Nov. 29th, pilot Brian Whittaker tried to catch a first glimpse of Comet ISON from Earth, post-perihelion, from a plane flying 36,000 feet over the Arctic Circle in northern Canada. No luck:
“Ideal viewing conditions from the Arctic revealed no Comet ISON,” reports Whittaker. “This negative report is to quench the thirst of other fellow dreamers under cloudy skies or further south. Later I could see that SOHO showed the comet dimming further.”
Despite Whittaker’s negative result, it is too soon to rule out observations from Earth as the twice-dead comet moves away from the glare of the sun. Meanwhile, NASA’s fleet of solar observatory will be tracking the remains.
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Any news on how Ison’s projected orbit has been altered by it’s encounter with Sol?
Pacman eats dot and poops out remains.
Far out movie. Looks like at the end it gets a swift kick in the tail from the solar eruption..but then the movie ended?
thanks Anthony
This is a better link, from the horses mouth .
It is fading.
Here is a link to an image of the projected trajectory overlaying the actual path
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/cimages/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/coast-to-coast/repository/carousel/feature-v/500867-421-eng-US/Feature-V.jpg
I echo Bloke down the pub’s inquiry. Any idea about the new path and how much mass is involved? Come on… get your slide rules out.
This is solar max and the trajectory appears polar to polar, dodging streamers along the way.
comet ending like
a leaf in Autumn falling
in hidden rhythm
Of course it is dying. “NASA discovered a large envelope of carbon dioxide around the nucleus, looking through its Spitzer Space Telescope”, that’s why.
The most evil gas known to man has done a nasty hatchet job again, the Sun has nothing to do with it for sure.
It was in there 7 (seven) hours. wow
Its been the most fun I’ve had with comets without actually viewing it in the night sky. I hope it wont be too much of a disappointment for people who were expecting to see a “Comet of the Century”.
There once was a Comet named ISON
Twas promised “The best you’ll lay Eyes on”
although near the end
it did brighten again
it fizzled out into a Bye-Gone
I agree with Sparks – I’m disappointed not to be able to see a daylight comet, but the thrilling SOHO and STEREO images make up for it. Also I won’t need to get up early on a freezing morning to watch it – armchair astronomy is cool enough!
That was the source of some of the happy anticipation of ISON surviving perihelion, NOT having to crawl out of a warm bed at 0430 to see it.
It stopped outgassing. That may mean it is now invisible, but does not prove it “fully disintegrated”. There was no disintegration “event” at the end, IMO.
Great movie. Can anyone tell me what the other small objects flying around in the movie are?
Been there, done that:
….it seems that the sure way to kill a comet is to declare it a “Christmas Comet” or “Comet of the Century” etc.
If this was Star Trek, we would find Scotty hard at work trying to restart the warp drive after a sun grazing manuver to avoid the Klingons, telling Kirk, “I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Captain!”
In 2005 I visited the Petrified Forest in Arizona and a made a photograph of the constellation Scorpius. The passing of Comet ISON next to the sun inspired me to photoshop a fake solar eclipse over Arizona based on the SOHO LASCO C3 image and my own photograph.
http://klimaathype.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/comet-ison-a-fake-eclipse-over-arizona/
Comet
Fizzle
And let-down
Are One
Well, we are still waiting for official astrobys confirmation, and I guess it is early days yet – but it looks as if my last observation/comment yesterday (before I went off to catch some zzzz’s) is still valid – i.e. it probably broke up with just a remnant trail remaining after perihelion?
To me, it makes sense for a debris trail to have made the spread shape seen after perihelion if the the larger ‘bits’ were drawn into the sun whilst the various finer bits were slingshotted back out to space at different rates/directions? It’s a long while since I did any physics though, so I may have got that wrong in my mind…….
Carla says:
November 30, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Yeah, seven hours!! I guess the fact it was going some severe speed meant the wind chill kept it cool for a while longer? Or maybe all the CO2 it was giving off actually acted like a ghg blanket and kept it cool by keeping the solar radiation out too? (Oh noes, the CO2 alarmists will probs use that excuse for any future cooling too!)
(I don’t really need to put /sarc, do I?)
My thoughts on this comet are, If a portion of the comets nucleus did survive, it maybe spinning out of control and will not producing a tail or if it is spinning more slowly we may see an intermittent tail appear and disappear. ISON/ISOFF/ISON/ISOFF/…? It’s typical behavior for a sun-grazer, though, short period comets tend to right themselves faster than long period comets.
The guys over at the ‘NASA Comet ISON Observing Campaign’ are pulling their hair out over this, I think the poor guys are so distressed that they’ve lost the will to use a spellchecker and are now calling it Schrodinger’s-Comet or “schroedingers-comet”, they’re disintegrating quicker than ISON/ISOFF.
http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/schroedingers-comet
ISON, I came, I melted.