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Hubble Confirms Comet ISON Is Holding It Together
http://news.discovery.com/space/ast...-comet-ison-is-holding-it-together-131017.htm

Despite speculation to the contrary, Comet ISON is holding its own against the sun's heat, with its cometary nucleus apparently remaining as a solid mass.
New observations carried out by the Hubble Space Telescope on Oct. 9 have resolved the interplanetary traveler with a beautifully smooth coma (the dust and gas around the "head" of the comet) with a bright tail swept back.
PHOTOS: When Comets Break Up
The comet -- which was discovered in September 2012 by the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON), near Kislovodsk, Russia -- is believed to be a pristine cometary nucleus that has fallen from the hypothetical Oort Cloud -- a reservoir of icy fragments left over from the birth of the solar system. It is reckoned that this "shell" of proto-comets is located around 1 light-year away from the sun.
As this is its first visit to the inner solar system, astronomers theorized that ISON's nucleus might fragment as it becomes heated by the sun's energy. Looking at this image, there appears to be no abnormalities in the comet's coma that would reveal fragmentation.
NEWS: Comet ISON Likely to Survive Solar Plunge
Interestingly, as noted by a Space Telescope Science Institute news release, a polar jet of dust projecting from ISON's nucleus seen in Hubble images taken in April is no longer visible and likely turned off.
ISON is due to make its closest pass to the sun on Nov. 28 and, should it survive the fiery encounter, the comet could become an impressive sight in nighttime and daytime skies when it makes closest approach with the Earth on Dec. 26.
 
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http://spaceweather.com/

GREEN COMET, RED PLANET: Comet ISON, which will fly through the atmosphere of the sun on Nov. 28th, is now flying past the planet Mars. The green comet and the Red Planet are just 1o apart in the eastern sky before dawn


Solar wind
speed: 370.1 km/sec
density: 2.4 protons/cm3explanation | more dataUpdated: Today at 2157 UT
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X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C8 1526 UT Oct18
24-hr: C8 1526 UT Oct18 explanation | more dataUpdated: Today at: 2100 UT
 
we had 1/2 dozen comets already this year.. Ison is a green comet

some others, in the past
The Greatest Comets of All Time

http://www.space.com/3366-greatest-comets-time.html


GREAT COMET OF 1744: First sighted on Nov. 29, 1743 as a dim fourth magnitude object, this comet brightened rapidly as it approached the Sun. Many textbooks often cite Philippe Loys de Cheseaux, of Lausanne, Switzerland as the discoverer, although his first sighting did not come until two weeks later. By mid-January 1744, the comet was described as 1st-magnitude with a 7-degree tail. By Feb. 1 it rivaled Sirius and displayed a curved tail, 15-degrees in length. By Feb. 18 the comet was equal to Venus and now displayed two tails. On Feb. 27, it peaked at magnitude -7 and was reported visible in the daytime, 12-degrees from the Sun. Perihelion came on March 1st, at a distance of 20.5 million miles from the Sun. On March 6, the comet appeared in the morning sky, accompanied by six brilliant tails which resembled a Japanese hand fan.
 
http://www.jwwerner.com/history/Comet.html
THE GREAT COMET OF 1680 Ison comes from the same cloud that produced the comet of 1680
also know as Kirchs comet



On November 14, 1680, Gottfried Kirch detected a new comet, becoming on that day the first person to discover a comet using a telescope. Astronomers throughout Europe tracked its position for several months. It was visible in the Northern hemisphere and by the end of that year the comet became bright enough to be seen at noon as it completed its hairpin turn around the Sun. The long, golden tail of the comet of 1680 was estimated to be 30,000,000 miles in length.
Originally thought to be two comets, the comets of late 1680 and early 1681 were in fact a single comet observed before and after perihelion, a situation that hindsight reveals as critical in the determination of the cometary trajectory. Upon examining the course of comets, it is easy to believe that some of them must occasionally fall into the sun. The comet 1680 approached so near, that, at its perihelion, it was not more distant from the sun than a sixteenth part of its diameter; and, if it returns, which some predict, in the year 2255, it may then fall into the sun. This must depend upon the accidents it meets with in its course, and the retardations it suffers in passing through the sun's atmosphere.
An excerpt from The Encyclopedia of Geography, By Hugh Murray, Phila., 1837, Vol 1 at page 115 describes the visit of this comet also;
A very remarkable comet was seen in the end of 1680 and beginning of 1681. Its tail extended 70 degrees, and was very brilliant. This comet, of all those which have been observed, approaches nearest to the sun. Descending with immense velocity in a path almost perpendicular to his surface, it proceeded until its distance from his centre was only about 540,000 miles. Sir Isaac Newton computed that, in consequence of so near an approach to the sun, it must have received a heat 2000 times greater than that of iron almost going into fusion; and that if it was equal in magnitude to our earth, and cooled in the same manner as terrestrial bodies, its heat would not be expended in less than 50,000 years.
Three observations on comets are recorded in history, agreeing in remarkable circumstances with the comet of 1680: - one in the 44th year before Christ; another in the consulate of Lampadius and Orestes, about the year of Christ 531; and the third in the reign of Henry I. of England, in the year 1106. These dates are nearly at equal distances of times, namely, 575 years; which is also the period between 1106 and 1681. Hence Dr. Edmund Halley conjectured that these might be successive appearances of one and the same comet, revolving about the sun in the period of about 575 years. If this conjecture is well founded, this comet may be expected again, after finishing the same period, about the year 2255.
Using the 575 year period, William Whiston, a contemporary and disciple of the great Isaac Newton believed that the comet of 1680 had literally grazed the earth after the fall of Eden, triggering the Noachian Deluge (Noah's Flood) in 2346 BC.
Further reference to the influence of a comet on the Great Flood was offered by Abraham Rockenbach. A scholar of the late Renaissance and the chair of Greek and of Mathematics at the University of Frankfurt. In 1602 he published a short treatise in Latin, De cometis tractatus novus methodicus, which had the following entry concerning the Deluge:
In the year of the creation of the world 1656, after Noah had attained the age of 600 years, three days before the death of Methusalem, a comet appeared in the constellation Pisces, was seen by the entire world as it traversed the twelve signs of the zodiac in the space of a month; on the sixteenth of April it again disappeared. After this the Deluge immediately followed, in which all creatures which live on earth and creep on the ground were drowned, with the exception of Noah and the rest of the creatures that had gone with him into the ark. About these things is written in Genesis, chapter 7.
Modern scholars disagree with Newton and Halley on the period of the Comet 1680 and have proposed that its orbital period is actually 9,356 years. There seem to be different opinions on which is correct.
 
http://www.space.com/19973-comet-ison.html

Comet ISON: Incoming Sungrazer

Amateur astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok spotted the comet in photographs taken by an ISON telescope in September 2012.
Even from a great distance, the comet does appear bright, making it possible that its nucleus is somewhere between 0.6 miles and 6 miles (1 to 10 kilometers) wide, according to astronomer Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory and NASA.
ISON is expected to get as close as 800,000 miles (1.2 million km) from the sun's surface, providing it survives the gravitational forces or the sun's radiation. That closest approach will take place on Nov. 28, 2013




The most exciting aspect of this new comet concerns its preliminary orbit, which bears a striking resemblance to that of the 'Great Comet of 1680,'" wrote SPACE.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao in a September 2012 article.
 
The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune -- billions of kilometers from our sun. Pluto and Eris are the best known of these icy worlds. There may be hundreds more of these ice dwarfs out there. The Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud are believed to be the home of comets that orbit our sun
 
the only concern you might have, or even consider
is will Ison cause a meteorite shower on earth, in January?
will it be just dust? as has happened before..
food for thought
 
Nastyman! said:
Why? He probably doesn't mean the actual meat and potatoes books. But stuff like Michio Kakus Physics of the Impossible & Physics of the future are mad entertaining.
Click to expand...
More like the layman's Brian Greene stuff. The possibilities and implications of infinity and the Multiverse are mind blowing. Good thing I didn't read that kind of stuff back in the 70s. LOL
 
this does not pertain to comets
but it is interesting, just does not deserve its own thread
gamma ray burst 774 AD
http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/01/08/mnras.sts378.full
A Galactic short gamma-ray burst as cause for the 14C peak in AD 774/5

I will not post it as I am sure some of you would not understand the math

this one is in, lets say English
Gamma-Ray Burst Fingered for Carbon 14 Spike in A.D. 774
http://www.scientificamerican.com/p...=gamma-ray-burst-fingered-for-774-ad-13-01-21

The year is 774 A.D. A blast of energy from outer space hits Earth. No one alive then seems to have been aware of it. But the event was recorded—in the trees. Last year researchers announced that tree-ring data from 774 and 775 show a sudden spike in radioactive carbon 14. The uptick points to a burst of charged particles or high-energy radiation that struck Earth. But what caused it?
One suggestion is that a supernova could be the culprit. And medieval texts do record the appearance of a “red crucifix” glowing in the night sky, although the timing is uncertain.
Another astrophysical possibility is a short gamma-ray burst, researchers report in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. [Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhäuser, A Galactic short gamma-ray burst as cause for the 14C peak in AD 774/5] Short gamma-ray bursts occur when super-dense objects—say, two neutron stars—merge, giving off a quick blast of radiation.
As long as it was a few thousand light-years away, a short gamma-ray burst in the galaxy might not have caused great harm. And they don’t glow much in visible light, so it’s possible that no one would notice. One problem with the theory? Short gamma-ray bursts appear to be extremely rare in our galaxy. On second thought, that’s probably a good thing.



now imagine a gamma ray burst.. hitting us today, with our population and technology
 
Gamma-Ray Burst Caused Mass Extinction?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090403-gamma-ray-extinction.html

A brilliant burst of gamma rays may have caused a mass extinction event on Earth 440 million years ago—and a similar celestial catastrophe could happen again, according to a new study.
Most gamma-ray bursts are thought to be streams of high-energy radiation produced when the core of a very massive star collapses.

The new computer model shows that a gamma-ray burst aimed at Earth could deplete the ozone layer, cause acid rain, and initiate a round of global cooling from as far as 6,500 light-years away.
Such a disaster may have been responsible for the mass die-off of 70 percent of the marine creatures that thrived during the Ordovician period (488 to 443 million years ago), suggests study leader Brian Thomas, an astrophysicist at Washburn University in Kansas.
The simulation also shows that a significant gamma-ray burst is likely to go off within range of Earth every billion years or so, although the stream of radiation would have to be lined up just right to affect the planet.
Currently WR104, a massive star 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, is in position to be a potential threat, Thomas noted.
 
Desso Studios said:
More like the layman's Brian Greene stuff. The possibilities and implications of infinity and the Multiverse are mind blowing. Good thing I didn't read that kind of stuff back in the 70s. LOL
Click to expand...


lol, I had to stay away from it for a LONG time. I wouldn't even watch a space movie if it was too heavy.
 
CHANCE OF FLARES: Fast-growing sunspot AR1875 has developed a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy strong explosions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of M-class solar flares and a 5% chance of X-flares on Oct. 22nd.

ORIONID METEOR SHOWER--UPDATE: The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) is still detecting echoes from Orionid meteors. This means Earth is still inside a stream of debris from the shower's parent comet, Halley.

http://spaceweather.com/

GREEN COMET, RED PLANET: Comet ISON, which will fly through the atmosphere of the sun on Nov. 28th, is now flying past the planet Mars. The green comet and the Red Planet are just 1o apart in the eastern sky before dawn


All Sky Fireball Network
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NEW: Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On Oct. 21, 2013, the network reported 34 fireballs.
(15 Orionids, 13 sporadics, 4 Leonis Minorids, 2 epsilon Geminids)
 
SOLAR TSUNAMI AND RADIO BURST: Sunspot AR1875 erupted on Oct. 22nd (21:20 UT), producing an impulsive M4-class solar flare and a loud burst of shortwave radio static. Amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft of New Mexico was listening at the time of the eruption. "I knew this flare was a strong one by the force of the radio shock front," he says. "It nearly lifted me out of my chair!" Click on the image to hear what emerged from the loudspeaker of his radio telescope:

Advice: Listen to the sound file using stereo headphones. The two channels correspond to two radio frequencies--21 and 28 MHz.
At the time of the flare, Ashcraft was also monitoring the sun using an "H-alpha" solar telescope tuned to the red glow of solar hydrogen. The telescope recorded a tsunami of plasma emerging from the blast site. "It's the shadowy wave that races away to the right of the sunspot," Ashcraft points out.
The tsunami was the source of the radio emission. Shock waves at the leading edge of the tsunami cause plasma instabilities in the sun's atmosphere. Those instabilities, in turn, generate shortwave radio emissions. Ashcraft is a regular listener of the sun and he classifies the Oct. 22nd outburst as "one of the strongest radio blasts of the solar cycle so far. Hopefully it bodes well for future activity."

http://spaceweather.com/
 
CHANCE OF STORMS: Earth's magnetic field is about to receive a glancing blow from three CMEs observed leaving the Sun between Oct. 20th and 22nd. Forecasting models suggest that the three clouds merged en route to Earth, and their combined impact could trigger a polar geomagnetic storm on Oct. 24-25. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. Aurora alerts: text, voice.
SOLAR FLARE! Solar activity is high. On October 24th at 00:30 UT, Earth-facing sunspot AR1877 erupted, producing a powerful M9-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast:

A flash of extreme UV radiation from the flare ionized Earth's upper atmosphere and created a brief HF radio blackout on the sunlit (Pacific) side of the planet. The blackout has since subsided. A CME might be en route to Earth, but we're still waiting on SOHO coronagraph data to confirm this possibility.
Meanwhile, more flares are in the offing. Two large sunspots, AR1875 and AR1877, have 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic fields that harbor energy for strong eruptions
 
A Super Solar Flare
http://unionvgf.com/index.php?threads/comet-ison.1051/

At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.



On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.
Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted
 
A Perfect Solar Superstorm: The 1859 Carrington Event
http://www.history.com/news/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-event

The Carrington Event On the morning of September 1, 1859, amateur astrologer Richard Carrington ascended into the private observatory attached to his country estate outside of London. After cranking open the dome’s shutter to reveal the clear blue sky, he pointed his brass telescope toward the sun and began to sketch a cluster of enormous dark spots that freckled its surface. Suddenly, Carrington spotted what he described as “two patches of intensely bright and white light” erupting from the sunspots. Five minutes later the fireballs vanished, but within hours their impact would be felt across the globe.
That night, telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand, but Carrington’s naked eyes had spotted the true cause for the bizarre happenings: a massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs. The flare spewed electrified gas and subatomic particles toward Earth, and the resulting geomagnetic storm—dubbed the “Carrington Event”—was the largest on record to have struck the planet.
 
On the morning of September 2, the magnetic mayhem resulting from the second storm created even more chaos for telegraph operators. When American Telegraph Company employees arrived at their Boston office at 8 a.m., they discovered it was impossible to transmit or receive dispatches. The atmosphere was so charged, however, that operators made an incredible discovery: They could unplug their batteries and still transmit messages to Portland, Maine, at 30- to 90-second intervals using only the auroral current. Messages still couldn’t be sent as seamlessly as under normal conditions, but it was a useful workaround. By 10 a.m. the magnetic disturbance abated enough that stations reconnected their batteries, but transmissions were still affected for the rest of the morning.




What would be the impact of a similar storm today? According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, it could cause “extensive social and economic disruptions” due to its impact on power grids, satellite communications and GPS systems. The potential price tag? Between $1 trillion and $2 trillion
 
GLOBAL ERUPTION ON OCT 25TH: Solar activity is high and intensifying. New sunspot AR1882, which rotated over the sun's eastern limb earlier today, promptly unleashed an X1-class solar flare, adding to a series of lesser flares already underway from sunspots AR1875 and AR1877. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a bright flash of extreme UV radiation from the X1 flare, which peaked at 08:01 UT on Oct. 25th:

http://spaceweather.com/


More flares are in the offing. There are now three sunspot groups on the Earthside of the sun capable of strong eruptions: AR1875, AR1877 and AR1882. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-flares and a 10% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours



X-FLARE UPDATE: New sunspot AR1882 isn't very big, but it is potent. The active region has already unleashed two strong solar flares today: An X1 at 08:01 UT followed by an X2 at 15:07 UT. There is no reason to think this fusillade will end soon, so stay tuned for more flares
 
2013-10-25 16:05 UTC UPDATE -- Second R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout
Region 1882 produced another R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout, its second in 8 hours, at 1503 UTC (11:03 a.m. EDT). No indication of a CME as yet, but as with the earlier event, it would be unlikely to cause geomagnetic storm activity from this launch position at the sun. Still awaiting the impacts of CME activity earlier this week that may bring G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storming today. Updates as conditions warrant.

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
 
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