Comet ISON

Comet ISON

This July 4th the solar system is showing off some fireworks of its own.

Superficially resembling a skyrocket, Comet ISON is hurtling toward the Sun at a whopping 48,000 miles per hour.

Its swift motion is captured in this time-lapse movie made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013, by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. At the time the images were taken, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span, compressed into just five seconds. The comet travels 34,000 miles in this brief video, or 7 percent of the distance between Earth and the Moon. The deep-space visitor streaks silently against the background stars.

Unlike a firework, the comet is not combusting, but in fact is pretty cold. Its skyrocket-looking tail is really a streamer of gas and dust bleeding off the icy nucleus, which is surrounded by a bright, star-like-looking coma. The pressure of the solar wind sweeps the material into a tail, like a breeze blowing a windsock.

As the comet warms while it moves closer to the Sun, its rate of sublimation will increase. The comet will get brighter and the tail will grow longer. The comet is predicted to reach naked-eye visibility in November.

The comet is named after the organization that discovered it, the Russia-based International Scientific Optical Network.

This false-color, visible-light image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.

Credits

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

About The Object
Object Name Comet ISON
Object Description Comet
Distance At the time of the Hubble observations on May 8, 2013, the comet was 3.8 astronomical units (354 million miles) from the Sun. The comet was 4.3 astronomical units (403 million miles) from Earth.
About The Data
Data Description The image was created from Hubble data from proposal by the Hubble Heritage Team, PI: Z. Levay, M. Mutchler, C. Christian, L. Frattare, W. Januszewski, M. Livio, J. Mack, and J. Sokol (STScI/AURA), and K. Noll (NASA/GSFC). High-level science products for these data are available from the .
Instrument HST>WFC3/UVIS
Exposure Dates May 8, 2013
Filters F350LP (long pass)
About The Image
Color Info This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly varying brightness in an image.
Compass Image Across a dark background, a comet appears as a hazy streak that stretches diagonally from the lower left to the upper right of the image. In the lower left side of the comet there is a small but bright, well defined round core. The gas directly around the core is brighter and whiter than the gas that trails the comet. As the tail extends upward and to the right, it becomes dimmer, bluer and tapers. Background stars appear as points of bluish-white light of various sizes. The three most prominent stars appear closer, with large well-defined cores surrounded by a halo of hazy light and four diffraction spikes radiating out from the central core.
About The Object
Object Name A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
Object Description The type of astronomical object.
R.A. Position Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.
Dec. Position Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.
Constellation One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears.
Distance The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
Dimensions The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky.
About The Data
Data Description
  • Proposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
  • Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.
Instrument The science instrument used to produce the data.
Exposure Dates The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
Filters The camera filters that were used in the science observations.
About The Image
Image Credit The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content.
Publication Date The date and time the release content became public.
Color Info A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented.
Orientation The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere.

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