Time-lapse Video of Ison by Justin Ng

This incredible video of Ison was shot by professional photographer Justin Ng from Mersing, Malaysia. The video is a time-lapse produced over 69 minutes, shot on the 27th of October.
Justin commented that when he first spotted Ison she was glowing bright green "It's my first time seeing a comet and capturing it in motion. It's truly amazing! After I compiled the images and did a time-lapse movie for it, I'm totally in awe and speechless to see the comet moving that fast across the night sky," he said

As the video plays you can see the comet fading, this is due to the fact that the sun was starting to rise and brighting the sky causing Ison to fade from view. Eagle eyed viewers may also spot the galaxy NGC 3428 below and to the left of the two brightest stars on the left of the video.

Please be patient while the video loads, it's well worth the wait!

Normally you would not be able to see Ison moving whilst viewing the comet over such a short period of time, even though she is traveling at around 680,000 KPH but because of the very low field of view of Justins set up it allows us to see her in motion.
Justin explained:

"The primary reason why the comet appears to be moving fast across the sky within 69 minutes is because of the smaller field of view, which makes a very deep space object looks big on the screen and move faster. This is evident if you were to use any planetarium softwares and try to zoom in closely into Comet ISON, you will see its moving faster and faster as the field of view becomes narrower.
I used a 20″ telescope and a specialized monochrome CCD camera to capture it and the field of view is 0.55 degrees. This is extremely narrow and the smaller the field of view, the faster an object will appear to move. Each exposure was only 90 seconds and so when you looked into the time-lapse in the slow motion part, each frame represent the distance covered by Comet ISON within 90 seconds. Which is logical because Comet ISON is traveling at a speed of 684,000kph (425,000mph).
Currently comet is not visible to naked eyes due to its magnitude of about +8.1 and the magnitude of the 2 brightest stars are at around +7, still beyond what naked eyes can see. However there have been reports that the comet is now visible for binoculars and medium-sized telescope.
The images used in the video is what you see in the RAW files. No other editing was done besides cropping the images to fit into 1920 resolution."

Justin Ng is a spectacular photographer with many awards under his belt, his work published by BBC's Sky at Night, National Geographic, ABC, EarthSky, CNN and the Guardian to name just a few! Justin does not limit himself to astrophotography, he actually specializes and is ranked one of the very best in the world at photographing landscapes, sports and especially weddings! So if your tying the knot and fancy the best photographer in the business check out his website here 

How to see Ison

OK so you want to see Ison, but how to go about it?

The most important piece of equipment is simply your eyes! This may sound obvious but come the end of November in to December Ison will be more than visible to the naked eye. Ison will appear as a bright point of light low in the sky with a long tail stretching far up in to the heavens, and should be visible all across the northern hemisphere.

McNaught's Comet of 2007

The spectacular picture above is of McNaughts comet also known as "the great comet of 2007". McNaught was visible in the Southern hemisphere. We expect Ison to put on a show of similar scale, so as you can see you really don't need any fancy equipment to enjoy this amazing celestial show!

That said to view Ison before she becomes visible to the naked eye you will need to use optics, as you will if you want to see some of the finer details in her tail, the lumps of material and even jets from her surface.
There obvious choice is to run out and buy a astronomy telescope, but this would be our last choice!
So what are the options? Well it comes down to three, Binoculars, terrestrial telescopes and astronomy telescopes and we rate them in that order, and here why....

Binoculars:

People always over look binoculars when staring out in astronomy, but they are the most useful tool an astronomer can own. Firstly for someone who just wants to catch a glimpse of Ison in all her glory, you really don't want to be spending huge sums of money on a telescope.
A good pair of binoculars cost considerably less than even the cheapest telescope and are not limited to just sky watching! Binoculars are much easier to use, it takes experience and a little skill to locate a distant object with a telescope and even more to keep it tracked on, binoculars make short work of both tasks! The large field of view you get with binoculars make finding objects in the sky easy. The best place to observe anything in the night sky is out in the country, on top of a hill, away from the light pollution of the towns and cities. Unfortunately for astronomers, these are not the easiest places to get to when your carrying a 25kg telescope! No optical device likes being dropped, including binoculars, but we can tell you from experience that telescopes really, REALLY don't like falls! Binoculars on the other hand are designed for "rougher" use. Finally space, not the bit up there but the lack of it in your home! Binoculars take up no room at all and can be kept handy in your cars glove box for those unscheduled comet watching moments! Don't know much about binoculars? Don't worry, scroll down for our buyers guide!
Get a good pair of bins, your back, wallet and sanity will thank you!

Terrestrial Telescopes:

These telescopes are often used for bird watching and are also known as spotter scopes, field telescopes, birding scopes or sports scopes to name but a few. Terrestrial telescopes can be fantastic for comet watching, but do suffer from a lot of the same restrictions that an astronomy telescope does. The advantage's of a terrestrial scope is that they offer higher magnification than binoculars without being to high like a regular telescope. The field of view is also much larger than a regular telescope which makes it easier to locate and stay on objects in the sky. They are much more rugged than an astronomy telescope, smaller, lighter and easier to carry. On the down side though, they are more expensive than binoculars, harder to use, heavier and more awkward to carry and still require a tripod. Our advice is, if you have one or can borrow one take it with you. If not stick with the binoculars.....

Astronomy Telescopes:

Astronomy telescopes are designed to view far space objects, rather than near earth objects like Ison. 

The high magnification and small field of view makes it hard to locate objects in the sky and with the earths rotation, hard to keep in view. 

Telescopes don't come cheap, and the ones that do are usually very poor quality. If you have never used a telescope before, you will probably become frustrated quickly. 

Don't get us wrong telescopes are the backbone of astronomy, but for when Ison comes close, they're to big, to powerful, to clumsy!

Its all about using the right tool the the job........







You might have noticed that we recommend binoculars! But how do you go about choosing a pair? Well don't fret we've written a guide........

ESA's SOHO Spacecraft image of Ison

With the US shutdown there has been a lack of images coming from NASA, which is particularly disappointing as last week Ison made her closest pass to Mars. Luckily the European Space Agency (ESA) is still up and running and releasing images! The ESA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO for short is a satellite that was launched in 1995 to study the Sun with a variety of on board instruments.Originally the SOHO mission was only going to last a couple of years but due to the amazing results it was producing it is still running today.

The SOHO craft is fitted with a special instrument called SWAN (Solar Wind ANisotrpies) which is the only instrument on board not to be pointed at the Sun, instead it looks at everything else! Swan watches the rest of the sky, measuring hydrogen that is ‘blowing’ into the Solar System from interstellar space. 

By studying the interaction between the solar wind and this hydrogen gas, SWAN determines how the solar wind is distributed. The ESA have used SWAN to detect the hydrogen in Ison's coma, which should be able to tell us how much water is being produced and at what rate. The data from SWAN should give us great new insights in to the emissions given off by sun grazing comets like Ison.

Ison captured by European Space Agency's SOHO craft using the SWAN instrument

The image above is the first image of Ison taken by SWAN to be released by the ESA, over the next few weeks as Ison brightens we should get ever more impressive pictures. Swan takes 360 degree images of space the only thing it doesn't picture is the Sun and the Earth, which are the dark spots on the image. What SWAN is photographing is the effect that solar wind has on the element hydrogen. Sounds complicated but its quite simple really, imagine you wanted to take a picture of the wind, but you cant see it. So you photograph the effect the wind has blowing dust on the ground or on the leaves of a tree, this is basically what SWAN does! Instead of dust and leaves it photographs the effect on hydrogen by the solar wind. What makes this camera particularly important for studying Ison is that because it basically photographs hydrogen, we can tell how much hydrogen is being given off by Ison, which is the main make up of a comets coma and tail. Now even we will admit that this image is not the most spectacular of Ison we've seen, but as Ison gets closer to the sun and more hydrogen is given off  her coma and tail will expand and the images by SWAN will get bigger and better and the data will be invaluable! 

Ison Location Update 06/10/2013

These are the current co-ordinates for Ison at 18:50 GMT  06/10/2013

Click here for Ison's position on a sky map

Co-ordinates: 09h  47m  30.8s    16*  20'  18.4"

Distance from Sun: 230,379,972 km

Distance from Earth: 296,098,153 km

Magnitude: 10.69

For those who don't know you can track Ison in real time from the comfort of your computer by visiting the fantastic The Sky live website

With thanks to The Sky Live

Does this Photo show jets on Ison?

On Tuesday Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Martinao Nicolini of the Ramanzacco Observatory in Italy managed to capture the image below using the 2 metre Liverpool telescope. One of the images appear to show what is maybe a jet from Ison. Jets are formed as a comet approaches our Sun, it begins to heat up and the ice begins to change from a solid to a gas with no liquid stage. Some of the dust is left behind as the ice melts. The dust forms a dark, protective crust on the surface of the nucleus (head) and slows the melting. In some places this layer is thinner, which allows jets of gas to burst through.

Ison captured with Mars Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Martinao Nicolini at the Ramanzacco Observatory, Italy.

The image is a stack of twenty, 11 second exposures and clearly shows Ison developing coma and tail which is now estimated to measure at least 3 arc minutes. This is a very promising sign that Ison is developing into the comet we have been hoping for.
Talking about the image Nick Howes said: "There was some debate as to the existence of additional jet structures on the comet. Our data analysis seems to show that some reports of this were possibly spurious, however, our one process does seem to show a possible small jet, which a 2m class instrument would be able to detect. Our analysis is undergoing additional review and peer checking with our collaborators in the USA. The scientific analysis of this comet and its inner coma is ongoing, and being monitored closely."
The team at the Ramanzacco observatory have sent the images and data to the Planetary Science Institute for further analysis, and we hope to bring an update later today!

NASA Prepares for Ison's flyby of Mars

Tomorrow see's Ison reach it's closest approach to Mars. Ison is going to come within just 10,460,730 km of Mars, six times closer than it will get to Earth!

There are currently 5 active Mars missions which will be turning their attention towards Ison, 2 rovers and 3 orbiters. The best equipped to study Ison are NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and ESA's Mars Express Orbiter (MEO).

Artists impression of Ison from the surface ofMars

Mars Reconnaissance is equipped with the largest telescope ever taken in to deep space at 20 inches, however it was designed with surface observation, rather than imaging comets! Like wise Mars Express original purpose is also terrestrial mapping and comes equipped with the very impressive HRSC Camera. Between them MRO and MEO should give us some stunning pictures and the most in depth data on Ison so far.  We are hoping to get much more accurate data on her size, the larger she is the more likely she will survive her encounter with the Sun at the end of November.
What's more as she passes Mars she is warming up more causing her tail to grow and increasing her coma. With all these orbiters and rovers pointed in her direction, we should get a fascinating glimpse in to how chunks of ice evolve and grow into the magnificent comets we all know!

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

All of this is just a small part of the research being conducted on Ison. A grand total of 16 NASA craft will be observing Ison from space along with the Hubble space telescope, 4 ESA spacecraft and every observatory on Earth! Ison is without doubt the most study comet there has ever been, and we are extremely excited to find out what secrets will be unlocked!

Photo of Comet Ison 12/09/2013 Taken by the Vatican Observatory

Date: September 12, 2013
Time: 11:41 UT
Direct link: http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=5167
Related information: Comet ISON was approximately 1.993 AU from the sun. That’s over 185+ million mi (298+ million km).
Credits: Carl Hergenrother / University of Arizona / Vatican Observatory