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11/26/2013 – Ephemeris – Have a helping of comet with your turkey on Thursday
Ephemeris for Tuesday, November 26th. The sun will rise at 7:53. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 12 minutes, setting at 5:05. The moon, 1 day past last quarter, will rise at 1:42 tomorrow morning.
Comet ISON is now invisible from the earth, being too close to the direction of the sun to be seen. However it is and will be in view of NASA’s fleet of solar observation spacecraft at least until the end of the month. The comet is already in view of the STEREO Ahead spacecraft, looking back toward the Earth and Mercury. Later tonight of early tomorrow it will be in the view of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO parked a million miles sun-ward from the earth. It will appear on the LASCO C3 imager first. Thursday it will also be visible to the Solar Dynamics Observatory or SDO. On the Internet go to spaceweather.com at the page bottom click on STEREO, then click on Latest Images, or go to bobmoler.wordpress.com.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Animation of Comet ISON rounding the sun on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 2013. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
Click on the image to enlarge and animate.
11/25/2013 – Ephemeris – Comet ISON and the week ahead
Ephemeris for Monday, November 25th. The sun will rise at 7:52. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 14 minutes, setting at 5:06. The moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 12:40 tomorrow morning.
Comet ISON, a bit more than 4 days from its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day, is now well within the orbit of Mercury only 22 million miles from the sun. The comet should be hard to spot this morning. It rises at 6:58 in pretty bright twilight. The cool thing is that since the tail points away from the sun, it will rise first. That may be something to look for a quarter to a half hour before the head or coma rises, and in darker skies. The tail will point to the upper right of the comet’s head. This too will be something to look for after the comet passes perihelion on Thursday, except the tail will point to the upper left. I’ll have more on comet viewing for Thanksgiving day on tomorrow’s program.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Animation of Comets ISON and Encke for November 19th thru 23rd, 2013 from the STEREO Ahead spacecraft. [Image Credit: Karl Battams/NRL/NASA/CIOC]. Click on the image to start the animation.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 