Bright Comet ISON (Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
Steve Mensing, Editor
♦Before I get excited about our night visitor to our Rowan County skies: Comet ISON, I’ll mention I last wrote about comets 28 years ago. The very last time I wrote about a comet (Haley’s) was back in 1985 when I penned the immortal “nerd” classic on amateur astronomy with binoculars for Tab/McGraw-Hill: “Star Gazing through Binoculars: A Complete Guide to Binocular Astronomy”. That little tome brought many hours of writing pleasure and connected me with amateur and professional astronomers across the globe in gathering photographs and data pertinent to the book’s writing. My world became a little smaller and the universe beyond–a whole lot larger. If you’ve traveled the world, try exploring the heavens next. The Comet ISON is an excellent starting place.
Comet ISON, derived from the Russian ”International Scientific Optical Network”, can be viewed in Rowan County with the naked eye under clear and moonless sky conditions. ISON appears low in the southeastern skies near the constellation Virgo an hour before dawn. At this moment ISON is en route to an extremely close flyby of the Sun on Thanksgiving Day. It’s future as a comet is unknown. Will it be highly luminous after its solar pass by or will it shatter due to the Sun’s immense gravitational force and heat? Will it draw oohs and aahs as a brilliant long-tailed comet? Or will it be a semi-dud only visible with binoculars for more experienced sky-watchers. Those questions only nature and time will answer.
Comet ISON’s icy core needs to survive its Thanksgiving solar encounter, a difficult task in order to be a dazzler. The comet’s core is a huge ice ball and not something like case hardened titanium–so it can easily vaporize or fragment. Our Sun exerts immense gravitational force and heat is like nothing we have on Earth save for the white light heat of a nuclear blast. ISON’s brush with the Sun will provide an answer. We may even witness this comet explode into bright fragments, becoming a short-lived night-sky spectacle.
For newcomers to comet hunting and for those with challenged vision, a pair of 7×50 binoculars can be helpful in spotting ISON ’s blurry patch of light. First off it’s best to get away from urban light pollution. Out in the county the night skies are much more likely to give up the comet’s dim patch of light. At dawn, prior to first light, go to an area with an unobstructed view of the East-Southeast horizon. Look toward the constellation Virgo for a fuzzy patch of light. Nearby will be the brighter planets Mercury and Saturn, and a fairly bright star: Spica. At this time the Comet ISON will appear like a hazy blur. Nothing eye-grabbing, but it could get that way around Thanksgiving and a short time later.
Passing about 621,000 miles from the Sun’s surface on Thanksgiving, more recent predictions claim ISON is more likely to survive its brush with the Sun. That’s great news for astronomy freaks.
ISON was first discovered by a pair of amateur comet hunters belonging to Russia’s International Scientific Network (ISON). Like other comets, ISON is the frozen leftovers from the solar system’s formation some 4.5 billion years ago. Conjecture and calculation hold that ISON arrived from the Oort Cloud, a gathering of icy bodies and dust beyond Neptune’s orbit. Every so often a comet like ISON gets jarred out of the cloud and sent hurtling toward the inner solar system. Computer calculations place Comet ISON as a first-time visitor.
Get a print out of the many sky maps available on the internet and hunt for the constellation Virgo–this is where ISON will be found. Then take a ride out into the darkest areas of the county far from the light pollution of towns and municipalities. Get an unobstructed view. Comet ISON is out there. You’ll find it with a little patience.
I’ll post more ISON locating helps in this article during the coming days.
