COMET ISON T – 1.5 DAYS AND COUNTING
2013-Nov-27
Comet ISON is still with us. Here is its current status:
- Millimeter wavelength observations detected a significant drop in gaseous production rates a few days ago which led many to worry that the nucleus may have disrupted. Though still a possibility, the comet’s recent behavior suggests that the drop was due to the end of a recent outburst and the comet may back to its ‘non-outburst’ level.
- Photometry conducted on visible light images taken with the STEREO and SOHO spacecraft show the comet’s decline in brightness to be stabilizing and a slow increase has begun. Still the comet was only around magnitude 3.5 to 4.0 as of yesterday though Matthew Knight of Lowell Observatory has tweeted that the comet has brightened by a factor of ~4 since it entered the FOV of SOHO’s LASCO instrument last evening.
- Unless the comet undergoes another outburst or starts to rapidly brighten it will probably not be visible to the naked eye or small telescopes at perihelion. Right now it looks like a peak magnitude of -2 to -4 is expected.
- The best resources to follow the action is at:
SOHO LASCO C3 camera (in FOV right now) – http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/1024/latest.html
SOHO LASCO C2 camera (in FOV tomorrow) – http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c2/1024/latest.html
- Carl Hergenrother (Acting Co-coordinator ALPO Comet Section)
