Starship Asterisk*

Comets Lemmon and PanSTARRS Peaking

Explanation: Two impressive comets will both reach their peak brightness during the next two weeks. Taking advantage of a rare imaging opportunity, both of these comets were captured in the sky together last week over the Atacama desert in South America. Comet C/2012 F6 (Lemmon), visible on the upper left of the above image, is sporting a long tail dominated by glowing green ions. Comet C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS), visible near the horizon on the lower right, is showing a bright tail dominated by dust reflecting sunlight. The tails of both comets point approximately toward the recently set Sun. Comet Lemmon will be just barely visible to the unaided eye before sunset in southern skies for the next week, and then best viewed with binoculars as it fades and moves slowly north. Comet PanSTARRS, however, will remain visible in southern skies for only a few more days, after which it will remain bright enough to be locatable with the unaided eye as it moves into northern skies. To find the giant melting snowball PanSTARRS, sky enthusiasts should look toward the western horizon just after sunset. Deep sky observers are also monitoring the brightening of Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), which may become one of the brightest objects in the entire night sky toward the end of 2013.

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Oh, cool....however...if ONE comet is a portent of bad things...what about TWO COMETS??????

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Boomer12k wrote:Oh, cool....however...if ONE comet is a portent of bad things...what about TWO COMETS??????

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A double negative would be positively positive!

Bruce

"The tails of both comets point approximately toward the recently set Sun"

Away, surely - though I suppose it depends upon what one means by 'point'

An amazing image of an amazing and very rare sight.

Boomer12k wrote:if ONE comet is a portent of bad things...what about TWO COMETS??????

Oh errr !
Two bright comets at the same time, another on its way later in the year, one near miss by a big rock, one hit by a not-so-big rock. Oh err ! I have heard of the "late heavy bombardment" 4Bny ago, could this be the start of the "even later not-so-heavy bombardment" ?!

Time to get the tin hats out

Beautiful: a rare combination of two comets on the same picture! I hope this double show will be visible from the northern hemisphere...

RedFishBlueFish wrote:
"The tails of both comets point approximately toward the recently set Sun"

Away, surely - though I suppose it depends upon what one means by 'point'.

Surely it would be better to say that the comets (themselves) point toward the recently set Sun.

BDanielMayfield wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:Oh, cool....however...if ONE comet is a portent of bad things...what about TWO COMETS??????

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A double negative would be positively positive!

Bruce

And yet, 2 times the same things = twice a much...so, in this case twice as BAD????

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The International Year of Astronomy should have beeen THIS year!

I think SOHO-LASCO will get wiped out by this pair of party goers

Comet ISON: Comet of The Century?
Coming in SOHO's field of view: November 2013
Comet C/2012 S1 was discovered in September 2012 by Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using data from the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON). For that reason, it is also known as Comet ISON. This comet is on a close encounter with the Sun on November 28, 2013 (Thanksgiving day in the U.S.), when it will pass at a distance of only 2.7 solar radii from the center of the Sun. Since Comet ISON was discovered so far out, beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and will pass so close to the Sun, many think that this could turn out to be a major comet. A number of solar missions, including SOHO, are planning an observing campaign to observe the comet as it passes by the Sun.

SOHO's LASCO C2 and C3 coronagraphs are expected to have a view of the comet as it passes through their fields-of-view.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/index.html/

The comet(s) come(th)! (Bringing some ice, too!)

Ann

Cool, pass me an ice cold one please. Don't forget the popcorn

ta152h0 wrote:Cool, pass me an ice cold one please. Don't forget the popcorn

Here ya go, ta152h0.
And here's the popcorn, freshly made, while the muzak plays. Just don't stand tooo close to the popcorn when it finishes

This is an awesomely beautiful photo! Thanks Yuri. PanSTARRS (I wish we were calling it Comet Nevski-Novochonik) jumps right out at you, while Lemmon takes a bit of searching.

We may have more ill portents these days simply because we're able to see more stuff in the sky and transmit news and images instantly around the world. Comets visible to the naked eye are rare, and depending on a comet's orbit and your latitude some will remain below your horizon during their periods of peak visibility. I can imagine that in olden days the sudden appearance of a bright comet would have gotten a lot of attention.

A large comet on a collision course with Earth would be a bad omen indeed.

Playing around with my planetarium software, I figured out that the bright stars to the right of Comet Lemmon are the tail of Phoenix, the bright stars straight down toward the horizon from Lemmon are in Grus, and the bright stars between PanSTARRS and Lemmon are in Sculptor. Fomalhaut, about 4 degrees southwest of PanSTARRS when this picture seems to have been taken, has just set. (I hope to visiting the southern hemisphere one day.)

Anthony Barreiro wrote:Playing around with my planetarium software, I figured out that the bright stars to the right of Comet Lemmon are the tail of Phoenix, the bright stars straight down toward the horizon from Lemmon are in Grus, and the bright stars between PanSTARRS and Lemmon are in Sculptor. Fomalhaut, about 4 degrees southwest of PanSTARRS when this picture seems to have been taken, has just set. (I hope to visiting the southern hemisphere one day.)

That's brilliant, Anthony! I've been getting cross- eyed trying to work it out and was just about to post to ask if anyone had any ideas. Although I get to see Grus (and Fomalhaut) here in Tenerife, they are the other way round!

Margarita

I thought the tails of comets always faced away from the sun and it looks this way in the picture. Am I goofy?

I vote goofy. I think the sun just set, right ? I think the write up got corrected on a earlier posting. Wait as minute, changed my vote. You are not goofy.

Anthony Barreiro wrote:This is an awesomely beautiful photo! Thanks Yuri. PanSTARRS (I wish we were calling it Comet Nevski-Novochonik)

We could nickname it Comet Ne-No, or NeNo-Nik.
Diana

Let us assume I am standing in that exact same spot as the photographer is, and at the same exact time. For giggles let us also make the Earth completely transparent. Where would I look to see comet Ison in this geometry ?

In the information brought up through the "look toward" link I found this to be very interesting:- "C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is a new discovery by Robert McNaught on January 3. This comet will pass very close to Mars on the 19th of October 2014. There is a small possibility that it may impact the planet! It is not currently observable visually." (the part in bold text is mine for emphasis).

DavidLeodis wrote:In the information brought up through the "look toward" link I found this to be very interesting:- "C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is a new discovery by Robert McNaught on January 3. This comet will pass very close to Mars on the 19th of October 2014. There is a small possibility that it may impact the planet! It is not currently observable visually." (the part in bold text is mine for emphasis).

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=30797

Thank you bystander for providing that link.

"giant melting snowball PanSTARRS"

Shouldn't that be "giant sublimating snowball PanSTARRS"? =P
Granted, that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.