IMAGING COMET ISON C/2012 S1 IN THE INNER CORONA AT PERIHELION
- Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, 616 69 Brno (Czech Republic)
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu 96822, Hawaii (United States)
- ASTELCO Systems GmbH, D-82152 Martinsried (Germany)
- Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics, Technische Universitaet Berlin, and Institute of Technical Physics, Berlin (Germany)
- Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Ceredigion, Cymru SY23 3BZ (United Kingdom)
Much anticipation and speculation were building around comet ISON, or C/2012 S1, discovered on 2012 September 21 by the International Scientific Optical Network telescope in Russia, and bound for the Sun on 2013 November 28, with a closest heliocentric approach distance of 2.7 R {sub ☉}. Here we present the first white light image of the comet's trail through the inner corona. The image was taken with a wide field Lyot-type coronagraph from the Mees Observatory on Haleakala at 19:12 UT, past its perihelion passage at 18:45 UT. The perfect match between the comet's trail captured in the inner corona and the trail that had persisted across the field of view of 2-6 R {sub ☉} of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment/C2 coronagraph at 19:12 UT demonstrates that the comet survived its perihelion passage.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365946
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 784, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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