Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28th.  The sun will rise at 7:55.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 8 minutes, setting at 5:04.   The moon, 3 days past last quarter, will rise at 3:53 tomorrow morning.

This is T minus Zero day for Comet ISON.  At 1:35 this afternoon it will pass perihelion, its closest point to the sun, only a bit more than the sun’s diameter above the bright ball of the sun’s photosphere.  It’s will look closer than that because the comet will be slightly behind the sun.  It will still be visible in the Solar Dynamic Observatory’s telescopes. To check on the comet throughout the day go on the Internet go to spaceweather.com at the page bottom click on STEREO, then click on Latest Images  You can call up the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the SOHO LASCO images, or go to bobmoler.wordpress.com.  I’m sure by tomorrow there will be time-lapse movies on Universe Today.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

There is a NASA sponsored Google + Hangout that will be transmitted on all NASA TV channels.

November 28, Thursday
1 – 3:30 p.m. EST – NASA Google+ Hangout: Comet ISON – GSFC (All Channels)

Here’s a link to NASA-TV:  http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

SOHO LASCO C3 image as of this update (10:10 EST 11/27/13):

SOHO LASCO C3 image of the sun and Comet ISON. Image timestamped 11/28/13 at 00:54 UT. 7:54 p.m. November 27, 2013 EST. Credit NASA/ESA.