For almost a year now the astronomical community has been abuzz about the possibility of a spectacular upcoming event. On the 21st of September, 2012, Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok of the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) picked up a faint, moving object out near the orbit of Jupiter on their long-range telescope. After a brief analysis, they discovered that it was a comet, somewhere between 1 and 10 kilometers in diameter, heading on a near crash-course for the sun. In the time following the discover, data on “Comet ISON” has made many researchers think that it could put on one of the biggest shows ever seen in Earth’s sky.
Classified as a “sungrazzer”, this massive ball of ice and dust is set to come within 680,000 miles of the Sun’s surface (a hairsbreadth, in astronomical terms) on highly elliptical orbit that could end up slinging it out of the solar system on its return trip. However, the fact that has got stargazers dancing around in circles is that this orbital path should bring it fairly close to the surface of the earth (relatively speaking- about 40 million miles) after rounding the Sun, on December 26th of this year. Assuming that it doesn’t break up as a result of solar wind and radiation during its flyby, it should put on quite a light-show for Christmas.
To give you a bit of an idea, take Comet Lovejoy, which passed the sun on December 16th 2011. This comet, which wowed skywatchers for weeks with a long tail (day and night), was only half the size ISON is predicted to be by the time it passes over us, and came much closer to the sun than ISON should which bodes well for the cosmic snowball in question. Despite the warnings of researchers and astronomers who remind us that comets can be notoriously unpredictable, and that ISON might break up before it reaches us or lose enough mass to crash into the sun as it passes, anticipation has grown so much over this icy body that some are already dubbing it the “Comet of the Century”. At any rate, keep your eyes on the sky this Christmas season- you may be in for a bit of a holiday treat.
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