C/2012 S1 (ison) Could Be The Brightest Comet Ever Seen By Mankind

[Polarlow]

This Comet only discovered last week, and due to put on a show from Sept 2013 until early 2014. is expected to be as bright as a full Moon, and visible to the naked eye in the Daytime !!

http://www.skymania.com/wp/2012/09/comet-ison-set-to-be-spectacular-in-2013.html/6978/

[Andy Bown]

Sounds great, thanks for the info, here's hoping for plenty of clear sky in a years time!

[frogesque]

Thanks for heads up!

[Crepuscular Ray]

That's a somewhat hyped-up version of the original press release, which was rather more along the lines of "could perhaps be bright from the Northern Hemisphere for a couple of months, but might turn out to be a damp squib like Elenin". If it doesn't come off, blame the media hype for raising expectations, not the astronomers! Hopefully it will, though.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Crepuscular Ray

[Methuselah]

That's a somewhat hyped-up version of the original press release, which was rather more along the lines of "could perhaps be bright from the Northern Hemisphere for a couple of months, but might turn out to be a damp squib like Elenin". If it doesn't come off, blame the media hype for raising expectations, not the astronomers! Hopefully it will, though.

Or another Kahoutek?

[Rainy]

Is it a bad omen? Plague and pestilence. When is the Arctic sea ice going to melt completely?

[Crepuscular Ray]

No. No. No comet shouldn't make any difference to ice melt in the Arctic, barring a direct impact (which we're not in line for with ISON).

Edited September 26, 2012 by Crepuscular Ray

[pottyprof]

No. No. No comet shouldn't make any difference to ice melt in the Arctic, barring a direct impact (which we're not in line for with ISON).

So from what you say, it's a load of tosh and all those people on youtube are wrong? Do you know how much time and effort goes into those videos? Do you know that if people keep being so negative, they'd have to go and do something in the real world?

*tuts and goes back to watching the ultimate 2012 disasters collection*

[Methuselah]

Is it a bad omen? Plague and pestilence. When is the Arctic sea ice going to melt completely?

[stewfox]

That's a somewhat hyped-up version of the original press release, which was rather more along the lines of "could perhaps be bright from the Northern Hemisphere for a couple of months, but might turn out to be a damp squib like Elenin". If it doesn't come off, blame the media hype for raising expectations, not the astronomers! Hopefully it will, though.

15 times brighter then the moon. So book your 24hr barbecue now !

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9567598/Coming-to-the-night-sky-the-comet-fifteen-times-brighter-than-the-moon.html

[Crepuscular Ray]

15 times brighter then the moon. So book your 24hr barbecue now !

http://www.telegraph...n-the-moon.html

As I said. If it turns out to be a damp squib, blame the media hype.

[Aaron]

A repeat of Hale-Bopp? God I hope so.. what a magnificent comet she was.. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

[Weather-history]

A repeat of Hale-Bopp? God I hope so.. what a magnificent comet she was.. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

It won't be, what made Hale-Bopp so great was that it above the ecliptic and some distance from the sun at perihelion and yet it was still very active. This meant it could be be seen easily in a dark sky and for a great length of time in cometary terms. This comet will fly pass the sun very closely and therefore at its brightest you won't see in a dark sky, unfortunately. It will be a fleeting visitor.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Weather-history

[Gray-Wolf]

I was wondering , seeing as we don't know it's compositional breakdown, how we can calculate it's close approach to the sun so well? Surely a pure ice comet will shed far more mass on it's approach that a more rocky comet?

I only wonder this as , a.t.m. it is down as an 'Sun Grazer' and that it is this close (800,000km from the sun?) fly by the sun that promises to be the brightest episode from the object?

As for melting the Arctic? I watched a prog ,a short while ago, looking at the 'flood myths'. One area of research was the flooding of the Black sea but the other was based on some evidence from deep within a Bulgarian cave system. Apparently the stalagmite samples taken from the cave showed a 500% uptick in precipitation rates across the region about 7,000yrs ago.

The Prof doing the research proposed that a giant CME, propagated from a 3km comet impacting the sun, warmed the earths atmosphere enough to generate this fantastic bout of precipitation.

After watching some of the recent sun-divers on the SOHO camera's it is plain to see that some impacts do indeed seem to cause CME's when they impact.

Should this phenomena prove feasible then ison could , due to mass loss on it's approach, end up a 'diver ' rather than a 'grazer' and so might generate an Earth directed CME of a size to temporarily give us a 'blip' in temp/precipitation (40 days and 40 nights eh?) and so aid the Arctic meltdown by delaying re-freeze (or even reversing re-freeze for a few weeks?).

If the impactor theory holds water (excuse the pun) it might well be why we hold this collective memory of comets and disaster if ,every so often. a comet appears only to be followed by a short period of climate disruption due to a CME impact?

Edited October 5, 2012 by Gray-Wolf

[Weather-history]

This was Comet McNaught in January 2007, now that was spectacular, I hope this comet is even brighter

[Aaron]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-21352427

It already has a 64,000km-long tail of dust and gas that will become visible to the naked eye later in the year

Edited February 9, 2013 by Aaron

[Polar Maritime]

A peak at ison..

[Weather-history]

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/perihelion-and-distance/

[Boro Snow]

i believe november this year is when its suppost to be at its brightest, ive just been out now to try and catch a glimpse of pansstars which is currently in the lower western sky but to much cloud

[Boro Snow]

[laserguy]

Is it a bad omen? Plague and pestilence. When is the Arctic sea ice going to melt completely?

 

Now it's a bloody comet which is gonna do for the ice, after all these years of being told by the AGW crazees that it was CO2.  Hope it succeeds where that failed cos' I'm fed up of waiting.

 

**Edit**. There might be something in the omen-of-ill stuff.... Hale Bopp appeared at the same time we moved house in Feb' '97. I remember us watching it for ages one particularly clear night. That marked the start of a disastrous 11-year period where everything went wrong in one way or another but especially regarding health and finances and culminated in us losing the damn house. Think I'll give Comet Ison a wide berth.

Edited June 12, 2013 by laserguy

[Boro Snow]

more info on the comet and some recent photos

 

 

http://www.sen.com/news/comet-ison-imaged-on-way-to-inner-solar-system.html

[Boro Snow]

some current facts from yesterday Comet ISON has traveled over 287 million miles towards the sun since its discovery back in sept 2012 and theres now only 296.8 miles to go and the comets average speed throughout july is 55,405 mph, not sure why the writing has got smaller lol,

 

Our first sighting should be in sept with a telescope/binoculars The Comet is Currently Behind the sun so its a no go at the mo, Nov/Dec/jan should be the months where you can view it with the naked eye and what a show its gunna be, well i hope so

Edited July 2, 2013 by Lee aka Boro Snow

[Boro Snow]

An Artists Impression of what it could look like 

 

[Boro Snow]

Latest photo of the comet taken by NASAs hubble only released yesterday