by yaska77
Billed as possibly the “comet of the century”, C/2012 S1 ISON has recently found itself in the sights of the Hubble Space Telescope. Still too far away to be seen by the naked eye, what has been exciting astronomers about ISON is its potential to become briefly brighter than a full Moon as it makes its closest approach to the Sun around the 28th of November.
Even at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun, comet ISON is being warmed causing sublimation, the creation of its tail (click to enlarge) – Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team
The comet’s dusty coma, or head of the comet, is approximately 3,100 miles across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 57,000 miles, far beyond Hubble’s field of view.
More careful analysis of the image (captured on 10th April) is currently underway to improve these measurements and help predict the possible outcome of the sungrazing passage of this comet, but the formation of a tail while still so far from the Sun could mean ISON breaks up before putting on the show we all want it to!
ISON was discovered in September 2012 by the Russian-led International Scientific Optical Network using a 16-inch telescope.
Source: Hubblesite.org
