One of the exciting possibilities from last year’s erstwhile comet celebrity – Comet C/2012 S1 ISON – was that the comet might spawn a meteor shower, visible this month. Will it? Astronomers agree: the chance is extremely remote that we’ll see meteors from Comet ISON in January 2014.
Comet ISON is dead. Why expect to see anything at all? Comet ISON is gone. If you joined the excitement on the days around November 28, 2013, you saw the comet sweep past the sun … and quickly disintegrate. Even the Hubble Space Telescope hasn’t found any sign of it; no one has.
Still, astronomers are optimists. They’re always hoping to see something awesome in the night sky. Veteran meteor observer Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society published at amsmeteors.org on January 9, 2014, saying:
During the inbound portion of the comet’s orbit, the comet passed approximately 2 million miles from the Earth’s orbit. The Earth arrives at this point on January 15, 2014. Normally, this distance is too great to produce meteor activity on Earth.
Comet ISON was producing a large amount of dust prior to its disintegration. Some feel that despite the distance that some of this dust may still reach the Earth …
Lunsford went on to say that meteor observers are encouraged to view any possible display of meteor activity despite the full moon on January 15.
Comet ISON is dead. Why expect to see anything at all? Comet ISON is gone. If you joined the excitement on the days around November 28, 2013, you saw the comet sweep past the sun … and quickly disintegrate. Even the Hubble Space Telescope hasn’t found any sign of it; no one has.
Still, astronomers are optimists. They’re always hoping to see something awesome in the night sky. Veteran meteor observer Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society published at amsmeteors.org on January 9, 2014, saying:
During the inbound portion of the comet’s orbit, the comet passed approximately 2 million miles from the Earth’s orbit. The Earth arrives at this point on January 15, 2014. Normally, this distance is too great to produce meteor activity on Earth.
Comet ISON was producing a large amount of dust prior to its disintegration. Some feel that despite the distance that some of this dust may still reach the Earth …
Lunsford went on to say that meteor observers are encouraged to view any possible display of meteor activity despite the full moon on January 15.
