Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Comet ISON is Spewing Out Carbon Dioxide and Dust

Comet ISON is Spewing Out Carbon Dioxide and Dust :

These images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of C/2012 S1 (Comet ISON) were taken on June 13, when ISON was 310 million miles (about 500 million kilometers) from the sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL/UCF
These images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope of C/2012 S1 (Comet ISON) were taken on June 13, when ISON was 310 million miles (about 500 million kilometers) from the sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL/UCF
As part of the Comet ISON Observing Campaign, the Spitzer Space Telescope was used to “stare” at the comet for 24 hours on Jun 13, 2013. Images from Spitzer’s “ISON-a-thon” indicate that carbon dioxide and dust are spewing out of the comet at a fairly large rate.
“We estimate ISON is emitting about 2.2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of what is most likely carbon dioxide gas and about 120 million pounds (54.4 million kilograms) of dust every day,” said Carey Lisse, leader of NASA’s Comet ISON Observation Campaign and a senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
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© nancy for Universe Today, 2013. |Permalink |4 comments |
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