Starship Asterisk*

BMAONE23 wrote:It is a fairly large file and takes time to load but ISON is the bright thing that is creeping in from the 3:30 position and enters the frame after the date (lower left) changes to 11-27

WHOA That's not what i got after i clicked onto C3. There wasn't anything happening in the middle, like yours, and no comet moving at 3 O clock, either. I don't know what i ended up with, but I'm not going back to find out.

November 28 update #2: ISON is dying before our eyes! As of 2 p.m. EST November 28th, just after perihelion, ISON's head — which swelled to brilliance just hours ago — seems in the latest spacecraft images to have faded right down to nothing at all.

What's left is a long streamer of a dust tail. The tail is destined to be flung widely across the sky as it comes out the other side of the Sun — unless every last bit of it vaporizes away first, which is possible and maybe likely.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft should have picked up the comet's head now, in its narrower, zoomed-in view compared to SOHO's. So far it is seeing nothing, nothing at all.

SOHO's latest LASCO C2 image.

3:30 p.m. EST: SDO's scientists were able to extract nothing of the comet at all as it crossed the SDO field of vew at perihelion.

The LASCO C2 coronagraph saw nothing at all come out from behind the occulting disk covering the Sun when it should have after perihelion.

Not even a headless dust tail.

Comet ISON is no more.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observin ... 61.html?jh

http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Yeah, the ISON Live hangout skunked the NASA people. I got to see Phil Plait's astonishingly green walls at his house, though.

Breaking up science news, then.

Breaking up is not too hard to do, if you are a comet skulking too near the Sun.

Be careful when you pick those golden apples of the Sun! Ray Bradbury didn't know they'll hurt you worse than Snow White's apple hurt her.

Ann

LASCO c3 shows the comet
http://sohowww.nascom.Nasa.gov/data/realtime

Margarita and I have had the same problem here - we've had trouble accessing Starship Asterisk*. This isn't by the way, the first time I've had trouble getting in. It's happened on a few occasions before today.

Anyway, Margarita asked me to post something for her, if she herself wasn't able. Unfortunately it won't look so good if I do it, since I can only post this fascinating blog as a link. Nevertheless, here it is!

The blog tells us that Comet ISON is like the Cheshire Cat. The cat may be gone, sort of, but its smile - make that its tail, or a version of it - remains! Maybe a small chunk of nucleus is still there, too! Maybe that chunk of nucleus will actually brighten, maybe it will actually become quite bright - who knows? But one thing is certain, time will tell!

Ann

Ann wrote:Margarita and I have had the same problem here - we've had trouble accessing Starship Asterisk*. This isn't by the way, the first time I've had trouble getting in. It's happened on a few occasions before today.

Ann

Same here, Ann. Usually it's just a 'can't display the web page' for a short time. But this morning it was a '1040 Error' (too many connections) for quite a long time. Some where around an hour and a half, from when i first arose and checked. Oh, it changed back to a 'can't display the webpage' just before i could connect.

If you have been seeing the error "Too many connections" lately the forum has been having some issues. Not sure why but it keeps happening. Hopefully tech support at MTU can get it figured out after Thanksgiving vacation. Bad timing! For now, we are thankful that a couple of them take a few moments out of their time off to fix it temporarily when it acts up, usually very late at night USA time.