These new set of images are taken yesterday morning by using a Celestron Powerseeker 114EQ Telescope and a Modified webcamera. For more images and videos visit our facebook page : facebook.com/learnsmartengg
C/2012 S1 AKA Comet ISON or Comet Nevski-Novichonok, is a latest comet discovered and confirmed on Sep 21 2012 by two Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. The discovery made using the 0.4 reflector of the International Scientific Optical Network near Kislovodsk, Russia and the Automated asteroid program CoLiTec.
It was actually on 28 Dec 2011 by Mount Lemmon Survey and by Pan-STARRS from 28 Jan 2012 were quickly located. Later on after the discovery some observations are made by SWFIT and suggests that the comet’s nucleus is around 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in diameter.
Now let’s talk about it’s orbit. This comet is coming from the Oort cloud which is beyond the Kuiper belt surrounding our solar system outside Pluto’s orbit. It will come to the perihelion ( which is the closest point to the sun in it’s orbit ) on 28 Nov 2013 at a distance of 0.0124 AU (18, 60,000 km) from the centre point of the sun, which makes it 11,65,000 km from the surface of the sun. The trajectory is found to be hyperbolic, which means this comet never came before and will never come again. It has passed the Mars at a distance of 0.07248 AU on Oct 1 2013 and it also been captured by the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter (MRO). It has been given below. It will pass near Earth on Dec 26 2013 at a distance of 0.4292 AU (6,42,10,000 km).
Are you asking will it visible on earth….???
The answer is yes. Initially it is predicted to reach an apparent magnitude greater then full moon, but later observations predicted that it only will reach a magnitude just greater than Venus. However it will be only visible to the naked eye from the first week of the Nov 2013. It will get brighter and brighter when it closes on Sun and it will be visible even after it survives the perihelion until the first week of Jan 2014.
There is debate going on on whether the comet will survive it’s closest approach to the Sun or it will disintegrated by our Sun’s immense gravitational field. Because there is something called “Roche limit”, it will determine the comet’s survival. We will see about Roche limit about later
The above image is the prediction of the trajectory of the comet ISON. Hubble’s capture of ISON near Jupiter orbit, it is given below
Our site will post further updates and images captured us using our telescope………