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Hubble Telescope Photographs Potential ‘Comet of the Century’
NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope has snapped stunning new photos of Comet ISON, which could become one of the brightest comets ever seen when it zips through the inner solar system this fall.
Hubble captured the new photos on April 10, when Comet ISON was slightly closer than Jupiter. At the time the icy wanderer was about 386 million miles (621 million kilometers) from the sun and 394 million miles (634 million km) from Earth.
The new images are already helping astronomers take a bead on the mysterious Comet ISON, which may shine as brightly as the full moon when it makes its closest pass by the sun in late November. (The comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA has said.)
For example, the Hubble telescope photos show that ISON is already becoming quite active, though it’s still pretty far from our star. The comet’s dusty head, or coma, is about 3,100 miles (5,000 km) wide, and its tail is more than 57,000 miles (92,000 km) long, astronomers said. And ISON sports a dust-blasting jet that extends at least 2,300 miles (3,700 km).
Yet the comet’s nucleus is surprisingly small — no more than 3 or 4 miles (4.8 to 6.5 km) across.
This small core makes the comet’s behavior on its trip around the sun, which will bring ISON within 730,000 miles (nearly 1.2 million km) of the solar surface on Nov. 28, especially tough to predict, researchers said. Also complicating the forecast is the fact that ISON is apparently making its first trip through the inner solar system from the distant, icy Oort cloud.
So it’s difficult to know if ISON will live up to its billing or fizzle out like Comet Kahoutek — another possible “comet of the century” — did in 1973.
http://news.yahoo.com/hubble-telescope-p…09966.html
2013-04-23 16:32:07
Source: http://yeoldefalseflag.com/thread-hubble-telescope-photographs-potential-comet-of-the-century
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