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+--- Thread: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii (/showthread.php?tid=12592)
Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - SBH - 10-26-2013
The sky cleared for a little bit last night around 7 pm and we saw what we believe may be the Comet ISON. Very bright and close relatively speaking. I hear we're going to have quite a show and that here in Hawaii we may be some of the first to see it.
Would love to here from some of our local expert astronomers about what we can expect to see for the next couple of months and what are they seeing up on Mauna Kea?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pqb8ytmXJ3I
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fXQFBd4XLg8
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - TomK - 10-26-2013
SBH - unless you were looking through binoculars you didn't see comet ISON. It's more than 10 times fainter than the dimmest star you can see with the naked eye right now. At the moment the light curve suggests it isn't going to be that bright once it does get bright enough to see with the naked eye, and looking at the ephemeris data I don't think Hawaii is going to be a good place to see it unfortunately as I think it'll only be above the horizon during daylight hours. I'll double check later though.
PS. At 7pm local time ISON is currently way below the horizon, so it's definitely not what you were looking at.
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - HereOnThePrimalEdge - 10-26-2013
The Pleiades, or Makali'i is rising in the east about that time in the evening now. It's a cluster of seven stars, close together, that have a kind of hazy appearance if you look directly at them. If you look slightly away from them, you might notice they are individual stars if you have good vision. Easy to see with binoculars.
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - SBH - 10-26-2013
I must have been mistaken then, looked very unusual in our sky. We were using binoculars and it was soon after it turned dark.
I had great views of the past two comets and I'm looking forward to seeing ISON. Will probably make another trip to the top of Mauna Kea as soon as its visible. Thanks Tom.
When and what can we expect to see here of Comet ISON and is that unusual to see smaller pieces of rock or ice orbiting a comet as seen in the Chinese radar?
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - hikatz - 10-26-2013
Honolulu Star Advertiser last Sunday of the month, has the upcoming night sky information and star map which Bishop Museum puts out. The star map is good for anywhere in the main Hawaiian Islands.
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/planetarium/skyWatch/2013/October.html
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/planetarium/skyWatch/2013/October.jpg
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/planetarium/skyWatch/2013/November.html
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/planetarium/skyWatch/2013/November.jpg
Hope this helps.
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - TomK - 10-26-2013
Thanks for the links, Hikatz, and they seem to confirm my own analysis of the comet's ephemeris data. SBH, the comet is only visible just before sunrise at the moment and is faint (you need binoculars). It should become visible again mid-December (if it survives its encounter with the sun) and might be visible to the naked eye around Christmas again shortly before sunrise, but predicting comet brightnesses is notoriously difficult to do. This comet is a sungrazer meaning it passes extremely close to the sun in its orbit. It may not survive closest approach which means it might not be visible in December at all because it'll have broken up. We'll have to wait and see.
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - SBH - 10-26-2013
Thanks Tom and Kat, fascinating. I'll cheat and use my Star Walk app on the iPad tonight if its clear. Must have seen Pleiades last night. Aloha.
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - PaulW - 10-26-2013
I wonder if we'll have a comet panic? Breaking up near the Sun sounds ominous!
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - TomK - 10-26-2013
Well, Paul, it's happened before! I'm not sure panic is the right word, but comets often bring some fringe groups out into the public eye. Back to that in a second, but we do know of comets breaking up due to close encounters. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, the one that famously collided with Jupiter back in the 1990s, broke up into several pieces, although that was due to a close encounter with Jupiter rather than the sun. Other comets have broken up as well (e.g., 73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann but over a period of many years in the 1990s and early 2000s). Current thinking seems to lean towards ISON surviving its close encounter with the sun, but we won't know until December.
As to the panic/fringe groups thing, I think that video SBH posted a link to is an example of that (sorry, SBH, I'm not at all accusing you of belonging to a fringe group!). I'm rather sceptical that video is real. First, I've never heard of the "Chinese Space Radar" and secondly that's not a radar image and almost certainly couldn't be one. The date it was taken was supposedly 3rd September this year. Comet ISON was a little less than 300 million miles away from Earth at that point. The comet's nucleus is believed to be around 3 miles in diameter. That would mean the nucleus would appear to be 2 milliarcseconds across to someone observing it from Earth. There is absolutely no way any radar or telescope could resolve the nucleus let alone produce an image shown in that video.
RE: Comet ISON now visible here in Hawaii - PaulW - 10-26-2013
Yes, Heavens Gate and all that. Not much time for the frenzy to build this time but it all goes faster with the Internet.
It's amazing that we can still be surprised by comets popping up out of nowhere. Many of us are very fortunate that we at least have a chance of seeing Halleys again - the only comet that can ever be seen twice in a lifetime. (please correct me if I'm wrong)