Comet ISON watch (another heavenly body!)

Are any of you people interested in looking out for this new comet?

Here's a link to a good article in the Telegraph :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space...-Ison.html


There's not too much in the way of good photos of it yet but in the next week it will get to its closet approach with the Sun, before turning and coming back past the Earth. If things go well, it could be bright enough to see during the day.

I'm not an amateur astronomer or anything - just love to see these things with my own eyes. Any half-decent pair of binoculars should allow you to see the different parts of the comet head.

Let's face it - we're up half the night anyway, so why not have a quick look.

If anyone finds good pics, please put something up here.

Cheers.

Taken on 15 November

Nice one, southlondonphil, looks really ethereal.

Here is a guide to finding it in the night sky :



Just find the Big Dipper and follow the line of its handle down towards the horizon. Your view will depend on how much light pollution you have in your area, as it is quite close to the horizon at the moment.

Taken on 19th Nov :



This one also on the 19th :

A short video from NASA :

"Comet of the Century" on National Geographic at 8pm tonight.

Viewed from The Canarys on 22nd Nov :



15th Nov :



18th Nov :



and one other :

When I was a kid I remember there was a huge fuss about comet Kohoutek. It was hyped by the media as the "comet of the century". However, Kohoutek's display was a let-down, possibly due to partial disintegration when the comet closely approached the sun prior to its Earth flyby.

The other great disappointment was Halley's comet in 1985. The previous approach, in 1910, had been spectacular and was the first approach of which photographs exist, and the first for which spectroscopic data was obtained.

Indeed, on 19 May 1910, Earth actually passed through the tail of the comet. One of the substances discovered in the tail by spectroscopic analysis was the toxic gas cyanogen, which led astronomer Camille Flammarion to claim that, when Earth passed through the tail, the gas "would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet." His pronouncement led to panicked buying of gas masks and quack "anti-comet pills" and "anti-comet umbrellas" by the public. In reality, as other astronomers were quick to point out, the gas is so diffuse that the world suffered no ill effects from the passage through the tail.

The comet was also fertile ground for hoaxes. One that reached major newspapers claimed that the Sacred Followers, a supposed Oklahoma religious group, attempted to sacrifice a virgin to ward off the impending disaster, but were stopped by the police.

Halley's Comet is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the only naked-eye comet that might appear twice in a human lifetime. As I would have to live into my 90s to see it again, I trekked to the top of a hill with a pair of binoculars to make sure I saw it!

Hale-Bopp was the last decent comet in 1997 and clearly visible for several months.

4 and a half billion years old. Hope the old lady survives her encounter with the sun, and emerges to give us another display

can we see this comet?