Comet ison- emp?

[Geaux4it]

They say its visible with binoculars. Will sling shot around the sun and its a wait and see approach

-Geaux

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[American Horse]

It's just a comet, a dirty snowball left over from the solar system's original accretion disk. Suggesting it might produce electro-magnetic pulses is out of the electric-universe genre of science with about as much credibility among legitimate scientists as astrology or the Mayan calendar.

 

[waltky]

ISON likely broke apart...

Scientists: Sun-grazing comet likely broke up
Nov 28,`13 -- Once billed as the comet of the century, Comet ISON apparently was no match for the sun.

Scientists said images from NASA spacecraft showed the comet approaching for a slingshot around the sun on Thursday, but just a trail of dust coming out on the other end. "It does seem like Comet ISON probably hasn't survived this journey," U.S. Navy solar researcher Karl Battams said in a Google+ hangout. Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog, agreed, saying "I don't think the comet made it." Still, he said, it wouldn't be all bad news if the 4.5-billion-year-old space rock broke up into pieces, because astronomers might be able to study them and learn more about comets. "This is a time capsule looking back at the birth of the solar system," he said. The comet was two-thirds of a mile wide as it got within 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) of the sun, which in space terms basically means grazing it.

NASA solar physicist Alex Young said it would take a few hours to confirm ISON's demise, but admitted things were not looking good. He said the comet had been expected to show up in images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft at around noon eastern time (1700 GMT), but almost four hours later there was "no sign of it whatsoever." "Maybe over the last couple of days it's been breaking up," Young told The Associated Press. "The nucleus could have been gone a day or so ago." Images from other spacecraft showed a light streak continuing past the sun, but Young said that was most likely a trail of dust continuing in the comet's trajectory. "The comet itself is definitely gone, but it looks like there is a trail of debris," he said.

Comet ISON was first spotted by a Russian telescope in September last year. Some sky gazers speculated early on that it might become the comet of the century because of its brightness, although expectations dimmed as it got closer to the sun. Made up of loosely packed ice and dirt, it was essentially a dirty snowball from the Oort cloud, an area of comets and debris on the fringes of the solar system.

Two years ago, a smaller comet, Lovejoy, grazed the sun and survived, but fell apart a couple of days later. "That's why we expected that maybe this one would make it because it was 10 times the size," Young said. It may be a while before there's a sun-grazer of the same size, he said. "They are pretty rare," Young said. "So we might not see one maybe even in our lifetime."

News from The Associated Press

 

[Geaux4it]

Not so fast, Comet ISON continues to surprise

-Geaux

Comet ISON reappears in new NASA images, scientists say nucleus 'may still be intact' | The Verge

Comet ISON reappears in new NASA images, scientists say nucleus 'may still be intact'

Despite earlier evidence that comet ISON had burned up and disintegrated during a close encounter with the sun, NASA now believes the comet may have survived the heat. New imagery captured last night shows material from the comet heading up and away from the sun, and scientists believe a small nucleus could still be intact. That's according to "late-night analysis" from scientists that are part of NASA's comet ISON Observing Campaign. Before this latest discovery, a series of images that showed a comet trail (but no comet) led some observers to declare ISON as an "ex-comet."

But NASA says ISON's reemergence continues "a history of surprising behavior" that has seen the comet brighten and dim "in unexpected ways." According to the space agency, these variations in brightness are the result of material boiling off the comet and provide valuable clues as to just what ISON is made of.

http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/comet_ison

Something seems to have survived ISON's encounter with the Sun ... but the question is what?

After fading in the sights of two NASA observatories and vanishing entirely from a third yesterday, astronomers speculated that ISON had met its demise. But then a faint smudge appeared in the images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). This could have been nothing more than a bit of leftover dust, but the fan-shaped feature didn't disperse, and began to brighten.

Observers at NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign have more analysis, but the gist is that no one is sure yet what, if anything, survived perihelion. It could be a fragment of ISON's nucleus. It could be too small to last more than a couple of days. Or there's a chance that it might have enough mass to grow back a tail and eventually appear in Earth's night sky.

We'll have to wait and see.

 

[waltky]

Sop-head's dream come true...

Lovejoy Comet Releasing Massive Amounts of Alcohol
October 26, 2015: There is a free cocktail party going on, but the only catch is you’ll need to get to the comet Lovejoy to partake.

Astronomers revealed that the comet is “releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity," according to the Paris Observatory's Nicolas Biver, lead author of a paper on the discovery published Oct. 23 in Science Advances. In addition to ethyl alcohol, the comet is also releasing glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar.

Comet Lovejoy is seen in this February photo released by NASA.​

The discovery of the complex organic molecules give further credence to the theory that comets may be responsible for delivering the ingredients necessary for life. "The result definitely promotes the idea the comets carry very complex chemistry," said Stefanie Milam of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a co-author on the paper. "During the Late Heavy Bombardment about 3.8 billion years ago, when many comets and asteroids were blasting into Earth and we were getting our first oceans, life didn't have to start with just simple molecules like water, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen. Instead, life had something that was much more sophisticated on a molecular level.” Comets are remnants from the formation of the solar system, and when their orbit brings them close to the sun they heat up and release gases, creating a dazzling light show.

When Lovejoy, formerly known as as C/2014 Q2, was nearest the sun on January 30 of this year it was releasing water at a rate of 20 tons per second, according to researchers. By analyzing the molecules and how they glow at certain microwave frequencies scientists were able to determine the makeup of the molecules. "The next step is to see if the organic material being found in comets came from the primordial cloud that formed the solar system or if it was created later on, inside the protoplanetary disk that surrounded the young sun," said Dominique Bockelée-Morvan from the Paris Observatory, a co-author of the paper.

Lovejoy Comet Releasing Massive Amounts of Alcohol