THANKS as ISON keeps GIVING!

UPDATE: 10:00 UT

It is clear that a part (reduced or fragment) of the nucleus of Comet ISON made it round the sun and is now moving away from the sun. After initally brightening and reforming a dust tail derived from its momentum as it swung around the sun, it seems to be fading now as it moves towards the outer FOV of the Lasco C3 camera of the SOHO observatory. The tail is gradually swinging around to the outbound direction. It will be interesting to see what the mission scientists can gleen from this from the multitude of data sets.

For now my rule of thumb, is really not very sciency, but if a naked eye comet reaches the Lasco C3 FOV - its going round! Not a lot of math in that, but its two from two in 3 years! Seriously though for the real science - read NASA's Comet ISON observing campaign blog which is being regularly updated by respected comet supremo Karl Battams.

UPDATE: 05:30 UT

ISON continues to brighten and a new dust tail appears to be swinging around from its transit path towards its outbound trajectory.

Image Credit: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - Lasco C3 23:30 UT 28/11/2013

What we know about comets is alot more than we used to know, but not everything there is to know!

Like most people with a passing interest in astronomy I have been following the passage of Comet ISON as it approached perihelion. I have followed the intense debates about what might constitute a "secular light curve" and observed daily predictions and alerts about what was about to happen.

Today it has been hilarious to see people pronounce ISON dead on arrival at perihelion and wander off to their thanksgiving dinner thinking its all over red rover!

Currently twitter is ablaze with witty retorts and updates as some sort of remenant has re-emerged and continues to brighten. Most of the wise observers are doing the appropriate thing and "waiting for more information". So far on twitter it has been re-named Schrodinger's Comet, Schwartzneger's "I'll be back" comet.

Image Credit: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - Lasco C2

As for me, I am reminded of Comet Lovejoy (2011) which surprised everyone and made it past perihelion and broke up outbound after a spectacular display at Christmas 2011. I couldn't help remembering that the tail didn't really return immediately after perhelion, until the Comet moved away from the immediate vicintiy of the Sun. In fact in 2011 Lovejoy's tail didn't really reform until it was even further out than it is now.

One thing to consider here is that the perspective from which we view these images is only two dimentional, ie whats in the image, and its very hard to tell from that perspective what at the front or behind.

Image credit: Comet Lovejoy (2011) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - Lasco C3

Whilst comets are not made of sugar, think of creme brulee, the sugar gets heated up, some smoke comes off, it suffers intense heat, changes its composition and comes out the otherside a crunchy piece of toffee with roughly its same mass but slightly different texture. Now this is a bit of a stretch scientifically as I said, as comets are not made of sugar, but with the heat, the increase in speed, the change of direction, the resultant slowing and cooling after perihelion, there is alot going on there that we really just don't know enough about.

Which is why comets are, always have been, and always will be, incredibly undpredicatable.

Comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy)

Comet Lovejoy is determined not to be outdone by Comet ISON. However, reports circulating through social media this morning that Comet ISON has now reached magnitude 4, will make sure it has more work to do - as if comets had opinions anyway.

Comet Lovejoy continues to brighten and its ion and dust tails continue to grow. It's coma is a massive 3.7 arcmins now in a 180sec image, which is probably closer to 2 arcmins in reality as the movement probably overstates it a little. It is very hard to make a magnitude estimate now from CCD images. Magnitude estimates are now best made by binocular observations and comparing the brightness with the known brightness of nearby stars. Comet ISON is now a naked eye object. Lovejoy, I suspect is not far away either.

The encroaching moonlight was not very kind to last night's attempt to capture a nice shot. Early this week Rolando Lingusti took a brilliant shot of Comet Lovejoy that was featured in Tony Flander's article in Sky and Telescope.

Comet Lovejoy was discovered by Australia's talented and "best practice" comet hunter Terry Lovejoy, who was a speaker at this year's Advanced Astro Imaging Conference on the Gold Coast. As a keynote speaker he outlined his search methods, which were, I have to say very comprehensive and methodical. Catching two brilliant Christmas Comets in three years is not a fluke, its through sheer hardwork and relentless persuit of what the Oort Cloud throws up each year.

Image Credit: P.Lake 3 x 180sec R,G,B T11 iTelescope.net

I found it a bit easier to observe the details in the tail in the individual subframes Luminance channel, which I didn't use in the R,G,B image as I ws getting too much light to manage with the intruding moonlight.

Image Credit: P.Lake 180 sec Luminance T11 iTelescope.net

I refered to Comet Lovejoy as the "one wood" comet (golf club) earlier this week in reference to its slightly out of shape coma. This can be mainly attributable to the fast speed of the Comet travelling at 9 arcsecs per minute in a direction of about 35 degrees across the line of its tail. Its pretty hard to pull up that speed at 0.81 arsces per pixel

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) November Update!

Comet Siding Spring continues on its merry way.

Currently overshadowed a little by the 2012 comets, ISON, Lovejoy, Linear 2012 X1 and Enke all feature this month in the northern skies. Siding Spring will have to wait till next year for its fanfare as it does a very close approach to Mars just after the MAVEN space mission arrives to sample Mars atmosphere.

None the less - Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is again high in the southern skies after midnight. These images are stacked in groups of 6 for the movement of the Comet to get a nice tight coma for astrometry.

All the iTelescope.net scopes haev been very busy chasing the morning comets so I thought tonight after I collected my 2013 TV135 data for MPC, I'd jump onto T31 at Siding Spring and chase it's namesake comet.

ENJOY!!!!

ACCELN Learning network -Space Education

Tonight Astroswanny joins the ACCELN Live Google plus hangout on Space Education.

ACCELN is a great network of teachers supporting other teachers innove in the classroom. More details: http://acceln.wikispaces.com/

Asteroid 2013 TV135 (PHA)

UPDATE 2: 19/10/2013.

Last night I got another 6 images of asteroid 2013 TV135. I have stacked them here at 1.4 arcsecs/m at Position Angle 210.3 allowing for the movement of the asteroid. This is a technique astronomers use to build the signal to noise ratio and derive a more precise position.

Image Credit: P.Lake 6x120sec images stacked. T11 H06.

Asteroid 2013 TV135 images from H06 at iTelescope.net. I managed to grab 6 images and stack them. I was hoping for a few more but the roof closed due to weather .

Discovered by G. Borisov & T. Kryachko of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory Observatory, Nauchny, (095) on October 8th. Initially it is listed as a "Virtual Impactor" on Sentry JPL with a Rating of 1 on the Torino Scale. This is NOT that unusual for a new PHA, as at the time these measurements were taken there was only 8 days of arc available. It is expected that further observations will move this off the Torino Scale back to Rating 0 as the precision of the orbit improves over the next few days.

Asteroid 2013 TV135 will make a close approach to earth in the Year 2032 and is 410meters in diameter and is currently attracting a bit of media interest.

Its important to remember that new asteroids (this one has only 9 days of arc) usually don't stay on the Torino Scale (the risk register) for long, as further data updates increase the precision of the orbit, and usually quickly remove them as potential impactors.

UPDATED: October 19 Leonid Elenin makes the point on his blog (in Russian) that the current zone of uncertainty is about 1/5th of its orbit, so its way to early to be talking virtual impactors. Leonid's best estimate at this stage is an approach of about around 0.0077 AU which is close to about 1 Lunar Distance.

The most interesting aspect of the orbit, in the discussions I have seen, is the inclination to the ecliptic of 6.8 degrees and that it tracks close to Earth for a couple of hours. Removing the uncertainty around this time period will be the task facing observatories over the next few days/months.

Footnote: The 6 images here shown in the video had quite low signal to noise ratio which I improved a bit by stacking them in three pairs to improve the Signal to Noise ratio enough to get a good measure on them. This is partly due to the current full moon.

International Observe the Moon Night - #OMN

Hi folks, I have been very busy lately and had not had much time to post anything.

So tonight I'll pump out a live Hangout for OMN. See you in about 2 Hours.

All eyes on ISON!!!

All eyes on ISON!!!! So as Comet ISON C/2012 S1 emerges from the dawn glare and the moon moves out of the way over the next couple of nights ..... all eyes will turn to Comet ISON. Its tail, at a rough guess is about 150 arcsecs now, and its visible for about 40 mins before dawn, providing a very narrow window for telescope users. Taken from +iTelescope.net on the 1st October, this is still way too close to the moon and had only just cleared the top of the shed. Another couple of nights and we should have some great images. I inverted this to try and manage some of the moon glare