Maybe it is too soon to pronounce ISONs death?! According to this awesome viewer, it seems the comet might have survived! helioviewer.org/ On the left side, in the images section, choose the SOHO observatory, the LASCO instrument, and the C3 detector. Then choose the time-step (in the time section) to be one hour. Go backward in time to see images taken from that observatory which clearly show the trajectory of the comet. The comet enters the field of view around 3:15 UTC, November 28th. Its nucleus disappears behind the sun (or behind the dark disk at the center, which is probably the refraction lens of the instrument) around 16:15 UTC, but it (or something else) emerges again around 22:15 UTC! Im a bit confused, as NASAs SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft could not catch any glimpse of the comet after its encounter with the sun: cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Still, it is likely that the comet disintegrated, and what we see in the Helio viewer might just be the left overs or maybe something else entirely. Interesting tool though, this Helio viewer! :-)
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 03:39:31 +0000
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