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Dark Sky Park: ISON

The Comet ISON
The Comet ISON

http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/2013-09-27%20ISON%20-%20WEB.mp3

IPR: The astronomy news of Friday morning is that Comet ISON is appearing through telescopes just above the red planet Mars, looking east at dawn. What can you tell us about ISON?

MARY: I like to start with what the acronym ISON means. It stands for "International Scientific Optical Network" which is a group of observatories in ten countries that have organized to detect, monitor and track objects in space. It is managed, in part, by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The ISON partnership involves many academic and scientific institutions currently including 30 telescopes in 20 observatories in 10 countries. Most of these facilities are located in Europe and Asia though there is one observatory located in South America and one off the coast of Africa.

The kind of monitoring and tracking done by this network is motivated by the fact that an increasing number of nations are using space for civil, commercial and military benefits. Ten nations have developed the capability to place objects into Earth orbit and more than seventy nations and international organizations currently operate satellites. The number of human-created objects in Earth orbit has gone from zero in 1956 to more than 21,000 objects that are currently being tracked. Several hundred thousand additional pieces are largely untracked and research shows that approximately 1,000 of these objects are functioning satellites which represent hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and revenue. You have to admit that these numbers are staggering.

The comet ISON, which is a comet that was discovered by a participating observatory in this network, was discovered in September 2012 from the observatory at the foot of the Caucusus range in Russia. At the time it was in Cancer nearing the constellation Gemini. This morning, one year later, the comet appeared above Mars in the region of the constellation Leo and, in two weeks, both Mars and comet ISON will pass near the star Regulus, the heart star in the constellation Leo. The comet will catch up with the Sun in late November in the region of the Scorpion.

Comet ISON was expected to be the "comet of the century' because of its potential brilliance. Unfortunately, it isn't performing as expected and though it is due to become visible to the naked eye in November it is still unpredictable whether it will fulfill its potential.

IPR: So ISON is an acronym for a network of observatories and telescopes and ISON is also the name given to a comet discovered by this network?

MARY: Yes, and trying to "read" the story of the comet is a bit like challenging ourselves to understand history as we are living though it. So we can start with the region of the sky where Comet ISON is currently moving, where it was discovered, where it will be when it becomes visible to the naked eye and what other celestial objects it has encountered along the way. We can talk more about this as we move toward the time when the comet will demonstrate greater visibility.