{"id":7941,"date":"2013-08-20T14:04:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T18:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.cos.ucf.edu\/?p=7941"},"modified":"2016-12-01T13:26:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T18:26:07","slug":"comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-viewing-planned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-viewing-planned\/","title":{"rendered":"Comet in Deep Freeze Thaws as It Approaches Earth; Viewing Planned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What some people are calling the comet of the century will be paying a visit to our part of the solar system in November, but scientists, including UCF\u2019s Yan Fernandez, are already hard at work preparing for its arrival.<\/p>\n<p>Comet ISON comes from the Oort Cloud, a refuge for icy debris jettisoned by Jupiter and the other giant planets to the distant reaches of the Sun\u2019s influence back when the planets were just forming. ISON is creating quite the buzz within the space community since it is now making its first trip back toward the sun since then.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been in deep freeze for about four and a half billion years,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty exciting because it likely has some clues locked inside its nucleus about how our solar system formed. Because comets from the Oort Cloud are so old and relatively pristine, we want to take advantage of what they can tell us about our solar system\u2019s earliest days.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez is part of <a title=\"NASA\" href=\"http:\/\/today.ucf.edu\/www.nasa.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external\">NASA<\/a>\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isoncampaign.org\/\">Comet ISON Observing Campaign <\/a>team that\u2019s been coordinating and facilitating observations of the comet since January. He is also part of another team that took the first infrared images of ISON with the Spitzer Space Telescope in June and released the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/news\/news.php?release=2013-231\">pictures to the public late last month.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs it gets closer to the Sun we expect to get more detailed information than ever before about the comet,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cAnd on Thanksgiving Day, ISON will get to within only 750,000 miles of the Sun\u2019s surface, so it\u2019s going to get really hot. That\u2019s pretty fantastic. It means all sorts of materials that we can study are going to be boiling off the comet \u2013 ices, rocks, metals. For the general public it could be a-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a really bright comet. We\u2019re hoping that in November and December you can see it with the naked eye at night right from your backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That is, if ISON doesn\u2019t blow apart first.<\/p>\n<p>ISON, like all comets, is a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methanol, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. These are some of the fundamental building blocks of planets. As a comet gets closer to the sun, it heats up and its outer layers evaporate away. Spitzer images revealed that ISON is gassed up, with the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in its icy outer layer already boiling away and producing a bright tail. There is a possibility that as ISON gets closer to the sun, the evaporation of ices will become so intense that they will destroy the structural integrity of the comet before observers on Earth get a clear look.<\/p>\n<p>Right now ISON is still too far away (well beyond Mars\u2019s orbit) to know for sure how big it is and what its make up is exactly, Fernandez said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe might then get a better idea of what the comet will do and how bright it might get in November, but that\u2019s one of the crazy things about comets \u2013 they like to defy predictions,\u201d he said. \u201cISON might disintegrate to nothingness, it might survive but under perform, or it might indeed be a comet-of-the-century. We\u2019ll just have to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Estimates are that ISON is less than 2 1\/2 miles in diameter, about the size of a small mountain, and that it weighs between a few billion and several trillion pounds.<\/p>\n<p>Should ISON remain intact come the fall, and if it seems like it will become bright enough, Fernandez said he will be organizing observation nights for the public from <a href=\"http:\/\/planets.ucf.edu\/observatory\">Robinson Observatory<\/a> on UCF\u2019s main campus. Fernandez is the observatory\u2019s director.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in the planning stages right now,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cBut if people are willing, we expect to have some opportunities in mid to late November for the public. It may mean getting up at 4 a.m. for best viewing, but we\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Should ISON keep it together as it loops around the sun and boomerangs back toward the outer solar system, Fernandez says more viewing nights will be added in December. But it would still mean getting up before dawn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll have a better idea when it gets a wee-bit closer, say some 200 million miles from the Sun in early September, so stay tuned,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Read original UCF Today story <a href=\"http:\/\/today.ucf.edu\/comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-ucf-plans-viewing\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What some people are calling the comet of the century will be paying a visit to our part of the solar system in November, but scientists, including UCF\u2019s Yan Fernandez, are already hard at work preparing for its arrival. Comet ISON comes from the Oort Cloud, a refuge for icy debris jettisoned by Jupiter and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[38,13,14,15,28],"tags":[3907],"class_list":["post-7941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-news","category-physics-departments","category-planetary-sciences","category-top-news","tag-yan-fernandez"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Comet in Deep Freeze Thaws as It Approaches Earth; Viewing Planned - College of Sciences News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-viewing-planned\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comet in Deep Freeze Thaws as It Approaches Earth; Viewing Planned - College of Sciences News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What some people are calling the comet of the century will be paying a visit to our part of the solar system in November, but scientists, including UCF\u2019s Yan Fernandez, are already hard at work preparing for its arrival. Comet ISON comes from the Oort Cloud, a refuge for icy debris jettisoned by Jupiter and [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-viewing-planned\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"College of Sciences News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-08-20T18:04:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-12-01T18:26:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2013\/08\/Comet_resized.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"314\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"204\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Judy Froehlich\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Judy Froehlich\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sciences.ucf.edu\\\/news\\\/comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-viewing-planned\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sciences.ucf.edu\\\/news\\\/comet-in-deep-freeze-thaws-as-it-approaches-earth-viewing-planned\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Judy Froehlich\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sciences.ucf.edu\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/d0a56f308c46b7b3e18f52d6ef199e82\"},\"headline\":\"Comet in Deep Freeze Thaws as It Approaches Earth; 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