First images captured of ‘comet of the century’ ISON as it buzzes NASA deep space probe

National Post Staff | Feb 6, 2013 4:33 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 6, 2013 5:19 PM ET
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NASA/JPL-Caltech This is the orbital trajectory of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The comet is currently located just inside the orbit of Jupiter. In November 2013, ISON will pass less than 1.8 million kilometers from the sun’s surface. The fierce heating it experiences during this close approach to the sun could turn the comet into a bright naked-eye object

 

NASA/National Post AnimationThe images captured by NASA's Deep Impact.

 

NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft has caught it’s first glimpse of the ”comet of the century” flying toward Earth.

The glimpse came as ISON (also known as Comet C/2012 S) passed Jupiter and sped toward the centre of the solar system.

The Deep Impact captured ISON at a distance of 793 million kilometers.

“This is the fourth comet on which we have performed science observations and the farthest point from Earth from which we’ve tried to transmit data on a comet,” Tim Larson, project manager for the Deep Impact spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. “The distance limits our bandwidth, so it’s a little like communicating through a [dial-up] modem after being used to DSL. But we’re going to co-ordinate our science collection and playback so we maximize our return on this potentially spectacular comet.”

The Remanzacco Observatory announced in September that according to their calculations of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) at that it will create a spectacular show in late 2013 and early 2014, likely becoming visible to the naked eye and during the day, making it brighter than the moon.

“Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) will get to within 0.012AU of the Sun (extremely close) at the end of November 2013 and then to ~0.4AU from Earth at the beginning of January 2014!” Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero & Nick Howes wrote in a joint statement on the Remanzacco blog.

An AU, short for Astronomical Unit, measures 149,597,871 kilometres or the approximate distance from the Earth to the Sun.

“According to its orbit, this comet might become a naked-eye object in the period November 2013 – January 2014,” the blog post continued.

The comet would flare up as in nears the sun and cause a lightshow that would be visible even in daylight.

“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,’” Joe Rao wrote on Space.com ”That comet put on a dazzling show; it was glimpsed in daylight and later, as it moved away from the sun, it threw off a brilliantly long tail that stretched up from the western twilight sky after sunset like a narrow searchlight beam for some 70 degrees of arc. (A person’s clenched fist, held at arm’s length, covers roughly 10 degrees of sky.)”

Rao posits that the similarities between ISON and the Great Comet could imply that they are very similar or even the same stellar object.


However, as with many astronomical predictions, not everything is a sure thing. In a post entitled “Comet ISON: 30% chance of awesome, 60% chance of that being wrong“ amateur astronomer Bill Gray is less certain there will be an amazing light-show.

“I expect that it’ll at least be of considerable interest to comet observers, much as C/2006 P1 was,” Gray wrote. “But estimating comet brightnesses a year ahead of time is about like asking who’s going to win the World Series next year. It could be astonishingly bright, or it could fizzle.”

Every once in a while, one of these loose conglomerations of ice, rock, dust and organic compounds is disturbed out of its established orbit in the Oort cloud by a passing star or the combined gravitational effects of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy

“Long-period comets like ISON are thought to arrive from the solar system’s Oort cloud, a giant spherical cloud of icy bodies surrounding our solar system so far away its outer edge is about a third of the way to the nearest star (other than our sun),” NASA said in a release. “Every once in a while, one of these loose conglomerations of ice, rock, dust and organic compounds is disturbed out of its established orbit in the Oort cloud by a passing star or the combined gravitational effects of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. With these gravitational nudges, so begins a comet’s eons-long, arching plunge toward the inner solar system.”

The excitement over ISON may recall similar the type of hype for the comet Hale-Bopp in 1997 or the comet Comet McNaught when it appeared in 1965. At that time, McNaught was brighter than Venus.