Ison GIF from NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft

Is animated GIF is of comet Ison comes from the NASA Comet Ison Observing Campaign and was taken by NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft using the SECCHI HI-2 camera. STEREO-A is is now the 7th spacecraft to view Ison and will continue to observe her right through to January.

The image is made up from photo's taken on the 10th and 11th of October and was put together by Karl at the CIOC. Karl is very critical of his work but we're sure you'll agree he did an excellent job!

Ison can be seen between the red lines. Ison GIF by Karl of the CIOC taken by the STEREO-A 

Explaining the GIF Karl said:
"Obviously comet ISON appears very small right now, as it is a long distance from the spacecraft, and the pixels in that image are very big. By that, I mean that each pixel of the image actually contains a fairly significant chunk of sky. By my very rough estimates based on previous experience with comets in that camera, I'd say ISON is somewhere around mag 10 -- which is more-or-less what ground observers are beginning to see, too. Also visible in the image are lots of bright blobs -- those are stars. Finally, that funny wedge-shaped thing is something we placed in the instrument field of view for early during the STEREO mission (back in 2007-ish) when the Earth was in the field of view and would have blinded the camera if not for that little wedge. "

NASA's STEREO spacecraft

The CIOC are still processing the data from the STEREO-A mission and are hoping to release more pictures in the next few days. In addition to the STEREO-A spacecraft there is also a STEREO-B craft and ISON should becoming in to it's view in a few weeks! 

NASA's STEREO Mission was launched in 2006 to study coronal mass ejections from the Sun. The mission consists of 2 craft A and B, one craft travels ahead of Earths orbit while the other follows. STEREO stands for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory and both craft are fitted with an extreme ultraviolet imager, two white-light coronagraphs and a heliospheric imager.

First photo's of Ison taken from Mars

At last NASA has released the first photo's of Ison taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter!
Using the HiRISE camera NASA's MRO took four photo's of Ison from a distance of 13.8 million km (8.5 million miles) on the 29th of September as Ison made her approach to Mars. The photo below is an enlarged image of one of the photo's, the first of Ison taken by MRO while orbiting Mars. The grainy image shows Ison as the blob of light in the centre.

Ison image taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Alan Delamere and Alfred McEwen, HiRISE researchers gave the follow statement in a press release:
HiRISE researchers Alan Delamere and Alfred McEwen explained in a news release:

Based on preliminary analysis of the data, the comet appears to be at the low end of the range of brightness predictions for the observation. As a result, the image isn’t visually pleasing but low coma activity is best for constraining the size of the nucleus. This image has a scale of approximately 8 miles (13.3 km) per pixel, larger than the comet, but the size of the nucleus can be estimated based on the typical brightness of other comet nuclei. The comet, like Mars, is currently 241 million kilometers from the Sun. As the comet gets closer to the sun, its brightness will increase to Earth-based observers and the comet may also become intrinsically brighter as the stronger sunlight volatilizes the comet’s ices.

Ison image's taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera 29/09/2013 (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

NASA's MRO using it's HiRISE camera is thought to have captured more images as Ison reached it's closest point with Mars yesterday, hopefully they will be releasing these images soon. Unfortunately NASA has been caught up in the US government shutdown, so we are unable to predict when we will get to see them. We hope this situation is sorted out quickly, but until then these images have really wetted our appetite for the picture's to come!