We have 4 comets in the morning sky. What do I see? Cloudy every day here. The four comets are: ISON Lovejoy LINEAR X1 Encke Did manage to catch Comet Lovejoy bewteen clouds. Most of these comets just look like cloudy smudges in your backyard telescope. However ISON brightened last week and is looking good. Thanksgiving day ISON grazes Sun and if it survives (may well not survive) we could get spectacular outbound comet in Decemeber. Nice ISON photo here from today: SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids Anyways it's a good time to get your binoculars and cameras ready.
Minor bummer in space: RIP, Comet ISON? Evidence is mounting that Comet ISON did not survive its brush with the sun on Nov. 28th. SOHO coronagraph images show the comet apparently disintegrating, while first-look images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory did not detect the comet moving along its expected path through the sun's atmosphere. Check http://spaceweather.com for movies and updates.
...so much for the Comet of the Century...but at just 13 yrs old the century is still young. UPDATE: Hold on, looks like Comet ISON is reduced in size but we *might* have a decent remant for viewing in scopes the next few weeks. It gets close to Earth in a few weeks, and that's what bodes well for a decent sight even if reduced in absolute magnitude.
Bummer again: ISON DIES ... AGAIN: Comet ISON is fading fast as it recedes from the sun. Whatever piece of the comet briefly survived its Thanksgiving Day brush with solar fire is now dissipating in a cloud of dust. see SpaceWeather.com
Ah well. Only a billion or more big chunks of stuff bumping and grinding away in the Oort Cloud to become future comets.
