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.
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 11, 2013 at 12:31 am
If the whole thing is not surprising to you, then why did it throw the other scientists into turmoil?
What turmoil?
Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.
“What turmoil?”
Nothing to speak of, Leif, apart from the Head of NASA’s top ISON observing team “tearing [his] hair out” at ISON’s inexplicable antics (and not only during perihelion and post-perihelion but also throughout the whole of ISON’s inward journey….).
Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, there was also the same Karl Battams bizarrely pleading with his worldwide audience to grant him a few days’ thinking time to cobble together some sort of ad hoc “explanation” for what no mainstream scientist (apart from your illustrious self, apparently) had anticipated or could even start to explain.
So if you really know so much more about what completely baffles your colleagues, please start explaining it now. So far, you’ve only come up with personal insults and strange generalities such as:
“Nothing happened that have [sic] have [sic] not already been seen before for other comets.”
Precisely, Leif, that’s the whole point. I totally agree with you here for once and I hope you’re starting to understand: just as with ISON, mainstream “dirty snowball” theory has indeed always been at a total loss to explain the data provided by each successive comet observation (Shoemaker-Levy 9 exploding in a fireball at Saturn, Jovejoy emerging intact from a 2,000,000°F encounter with the Sun’s corona, the sudden million-fold brightening of Comet Holmes while in a state of deep-freeze beyond the orbit of Saturn, the Deep Impact/Tempel 1 pre-impact flash and the huge amounts of “talcum powder”-like dust the impact generated, the “impossible” minerals brought back by the Stardust mission, etc., etc.) or every image of rocky, cratered, comet nuclei that successive missions have obtained (Halley, Hartley 2, Tempel 1, Borrelly, Wild 2.), not to speak of the well-documeted COMETARY behavior of certain ASTEROIDS or PLANETOIDS (Chiron, 174P/Echeclus, 52872 Okyrhoe, etc., etc.) ….
Just business as usual, in fact.
Dr. Svalgaard,
“What turmoil?
Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.”
Your answer offers a misdirection, in that the question was not about what has happened before.
My enquiry was intended to sort through who is answering straight, and your answer fails that test.
I don’t think I have to list headlines quoting confusion on the events for you to understand my question.
French_Atkins,
How do you explain the turmoil expressed now and not screamed out earlier?
“Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.”
vs.
“We have never seen a comet like this,” Naval Research Laboratory astrophysicist Karl Battams said during a NASA news conference Tuesday. “It has been behaving strangely.”
Interpreting Leif’s comment,
in the context of our earlier conversation about remote spectroscopy, it appears his statement is correct. The spectra of ISON’s coma and tail differ from previously observed comets about as much as all those previous comets vaired amongst themselves. But it is not a convincing argument to scratch #1. Where is direct evidence of ice in comets?
Even if all we had was spectroscopy, it would be very difficult to form that impression.
http://wela.astro.ulg.ac.be/themes/solar/Comets/atlas.html (note atomic spectra)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ…713L..69C
Also look for “Silicate signature” in “Physics of Comets” by K. S. Krishna Swamy (available in google books).
I get the sense that one can find anything one wants with spectroscopy. You want water — no problem. Just look for various water and water-related spectra. You want silicates — just ask, and you will find somebody who knows which instrument to use and how to tune it to Si-O vibrations.
Luckily, thanks to NASA, we have actual comet particles trapped during the recent comet encounters. Now it is really funny to see people get excited over troilite, among other rock-like particles. Look! FeS! The most solid evidence of water so far! Solid, indeed. It could have formed in water.
I think Lief is quite used to the taste of foot by now.
lsvalgaard says:
December 4, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Here are some cool movies:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12021624-multiple-views-of-comet-ison.html
An updated press release with movie: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/fire-vs-ice-the-science-of-ison-at-perihelion/#.UqgPItJDv3Q
———
Yes they are…
Back to AGU videos…
“Interpreting Leif’s comment,
Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.
in the context of our earlier conversation about remote spectroscopy, it appears his statement is correct.”
That is not the context of my question to him.
The question really is about the other scientists and why his answer is completely at odds with the sentiments expressed by other experts.
” ‘Yawn’ Same old same old” vs “NEVER have we seen kind of behaviour or comet before!”
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 11, 2013 at 3:47 pm
I don’t think I have to list headlines quoting confusion on the events for you to understand my question.
I’m afraid you will have to.
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 11, 2013 at 3:47 pm
I don’t think I have to list headlines quoting confusion on the events for you to understand my question.
To clarify, I don’ think anybody was expressing ‘confusion’. Find me a quote of someone saying ‘I’m confused’. BTW, it is hard to give a ‘straight’ answer to a muddled question.
Dr Svalgaard said
“thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 11, 2013 at 3:47 pm
I don’t think I have to list headlines quoting confusion on the events for you to understand my question.
To clarify, I don’ think anybody was expressing ‘confusion’. Find me a quote of someone saying ‘I’m confused’. BTW, it is hard to give a ‘straight’ answer to a muddled question.”
Dr. Svalgaard,
Please look at these two statements. One is from you, one is from Dr Battams.
Yours:
“Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.”
Dr. Battams’s:
“We have never seen a comet like this,” Naval Research Laboratory astrophysicist Karl Battams said during a NASA news conference Tuesday. “It has been behaving strangely.”
They say opposites.
Dr.Svalgaaard said:
” Find me a quote of someone saying ‘I’m confused’”
” “We have a whole new set of unknowns, and this ridiculous, crazy, dynamic and unpredictable object continues to amaze, astound and confuse us to no end.”
Thisisnotgoodtogo, Dr. Svalgaaard has what might be called a literal mind. I very much doubt that you will get him to admit that “I’m confused” is strictly equivalent to saying “this […] object continues to […] confuse us”.
lsvalgaard says:
December 4, 2013 at 5:46 pm
“Here are some cool movies:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12021624-multiple-views-of-comet-ison.html
An updated press release with movie:http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/fire-vs-ice-the-science-of-ison-at-perihelion/#.UqgPItJDv3Q”
“Cool movies”? Sure, we’ve presumably all studied these images pretty closely over the past few days.
Problem is, they show nothing after 2013/11/30, whereas the image I referenced on the (albeit 100% mainstream!) UT website in my December 10, 2013 at 8:51 am post
http://www.universetoday.com/106976/is-anything-left-of-ison-spacecraft-continue-to-monitor-comets-remains/
which clearly shows a very big, very bright object (several times bigger and brighter in the image than Mercury, even though it’s twice as far from STEREO A’s camera as Mercury is) DATES FROM 2013/12/03.
I don’t know about what happens where you live, but over here in France, a video showing someone visibly still alive on Dec 3rd will carry much more weight in a law-court than videos purporting to show the corpse of the same person three days earlier. Anyone publishing an obituary on Dec 4th would be laughed out of court.
As for the “updated press release”, it features, in particular, Karl Battams who had apparently just managed to get his act together after several days of self-inflicted hair-tearing, sufficiently in any case to present the semblance of a cobbled-up, ad hoc “explanation” for the behaviour of what, up until then, had been a “ridiculous, crazy, dynamic and unpredictable object [which] continues to amaze, astound and confuse us to no end”.
Especially loved Battams’ “something occurred – perhaps the passage of a nearby star” bit to explain ISON’s observed trajectory…! The stuff that fairy-tales of made of…
Not impressed.
French_Atkins says:
December 12, 2013 at 3:54 am
but over here in France, a video showing someone visibly still alive on Dec 3rd
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/12/11/rest-in-pieces-comet-ison/
“The comet, which excited astronomers and the media as it zipped within 730,000 miles of the sun on Thanksgiving Day, was pronounced dead at a scientific conference Tuesday. Astronomers who had followed the ice ball mourned the loss of the sky show that once promised to light up during December”
“”At this point it seems like there is nothing left,” Battams said at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. “Sorry, everyone, Comet ISON is dead. But its memory will live on.”
Astronomers had hoped it would survive because some — but not most — comets make it past close approaches with the sun. Last year, Comet Lovejoy did.
“Comets are balls of dust and ice from the formation of the solar system billions of years ago. ISON was on its first trip after leaving the Oort cloud on the distant fringes of the solar system. Unlike comets that are “hardened” by several trips around the sun, ISON just couldn’t survive its maiden voyage, Battams said. ISON, about half a mile wide, was tiny and probably smaller than originally estimated, Battams said.”
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 11, 2013 at 10:44 pm
“Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.”
“We have never seen a comet like this,”
They say opposites.
No, first one says that we have seen the demise of thousands of comets before. Second one just says that it is very rare to see a pristine comet 4.5 billion years old coming our way in the inner solar system. Your statement is not good to go.
So we can now check the prediction of EU:
meemoe_uk says:
December 1, 2013 at 12:54 pm
– It will be brighter than on the way in.
…I’m asserting Ison hasn’t disintegrated to dust … Just takes time for new ion jets to emerge and power up.
It should be clear that those predictions failed miserably.
Dr Svalgaard said:
”
“thisisnotgoodtogo said:
“Nothing happened that have have not already been seen before for other comets.”
“We have never seen a comet like this,”
They say opposites.”
No, first one says that we have seen the demise of thousands of comets before. Second one just says that it is very rare to see a pristine comet 4.5 billion years old coming our way in the inner solar system. Your statement is not good to go. ”
Dr Svalgaard, You removed the telling part of the quotation. It says nothing like what you pretend.
The second does not say “it is very rare to see a pristine comet 4.5 billion years old coming our way…”
It says “We have never seen a comet like this. It has been behaving strangely.”
This meaning of never having seen one like this behaving so strangely. This is made very plain and clear when the other statements are taken into account.
“We have a whole new set of unknowns, and this ridiculous, crazy, dynamic and unpredictable object continues to amaze, astound and confuse us to no end.”
I’m appalled by your dishonesty.
Good bye.
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 12, 2013 at 6:47 am
It says “We have never seen a comet like this. It has been behaving strangely.”
Regardless, there has been nothing strange about the demise of ISON. We have seen thousands die before.
“Regardless” ?
oh my. you’ve sickened me.
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 12, 2013 at 6:55 am
“Regardless” ? oh my. you’ve sickened me.
Perhaps you are still well enough to tell us what was strange about ISON’s behavior.
Again, your comments are not ‘good to go’.
I have no answers about anything in the field, Dr. Svalgaard, except for one: “No, do not expect Dr. Svalgaard to reply honestly about anything”.
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 12, 2013 at 7:14 am
I have no answers about anything in the field
Then you are hardly qualified to comment on anything…
For the record: this by no means says that the opposition’s theory is to my mind, correct.
It’s just been a stunning intro to the debate.
“Then you are hardly qualified to comment on anything”
I am not qualified to comment on the physics or anything in textbooks on the field.
I am now very qualified to comment on Dr. Svalgaard’s behaviour.