Science
Related: About this forumFinal update on ISON - it's a no go
Email from the International Astronomical Union:
"...there is no visible nucleus or central condensation; what remains is very diffuse, largely transparent to background stars, and fading; it appears that basically a cloud of dust remains from the nucleus."
Read the full email: http://yhoo.it/1cfJlyP
tridim
(45,358 posts)I wonder if it will recombine a bit? Gravity is still in effect.
longship
(40,416 posts)What's left of ISON has little mass compared to what it had. And remember, it was not a big comet to begin with, in spite of the poor reportage that claims it was. It was only about 2 km diameter, less than a mile.
Halley's Comet is a peanut shaped 15 km x 8 km x 8 km.
Hale-Bopp was truly a big comet, about 60 km diameter.
Even the other great comet of 1996, Hyakutake, was fairly small but dwarfed C2013 S1 (ISON) at 4+ km. I saw that one from my porch. Its tail extended across the sky, clearly visible without a scope in my semi-dark rural location. But it never got closer than about 20,000,000 miles of the sun. (0.23 AU).
By comparison, C2013 S1 (ISON) was a peanut. As soon as it was plotted to have a sun grazing perihelion its fate was determined, as many astronomers predicted.
Buh-bye C2013 S1 (ISON). It only had one chance and it was just too small to make it.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)He can't keep cutting NASA's budget like this.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)ISON expands into the vastness of time.
Do you think that TBN guy hitched a ride? and wrecked it?