NASA's messenger at Mercury will be taking pictures of the flybys. But will they actually release any of them? I won't hold my breath since they haven't released any pictures of ISON so far.
from site: MESSENGER Detects Comets ISON and Encke, Prepares for Closer Encounters
NASA's Mercury-orbiting MESSENGER spacecraft has captured images of two comets -- 2P/Encke and C/2012 S1 (ISON) -- setting the stage for observations later this month when both comets will be substantially brighter and much closer to Mercury and the Sun. [more]
Here is Hubble's ISON page. Notice they mention things (ISON's outburst) - but not a single picture from them. Oh, notice how they say... ISON only as Hubble can see it. Yet.. no image!
The pictures NASA have of the two comets on their site is a joke! Give me a break, this is the best they can do? Here are the pictures they/NASA released of the comets.
Also take a look at the NASA site of their bigger pictures of both ISON and Encke. You will find they have amateur photographs of the comets. Not a single one from a telescope of theirs.
Funny considering we the public are the ones who support NASA, yet they hide everything from us.
Here is ISON's orbit from JPL
So what is it about ISON that NASA doesn't want to release up close pictures of it? They don't want to show themselves as lying all these years, saying that Comets are just big things of ice?
This guy found Hubble images of ISON from May.
One thing is for sure. I sincerely hope that amateur photographers/astronomers will be out tomorrow morning and the next getting pictures of Mercury as the comets interact with it.
Here is the best site (Earthsky.org) I have found for information about ISON and it passing by Mercury. There are pictures, etc. of where it will be in the sky.
I wish I had a really good telescope and camera to get pictures of it.
UPDATE 11/17/13 - 11:20 am EST - Upclose Picture of ISON Coma from Ison! Perfectly Round Coma with two additional objects in it.
Thank you for posting this. I have been trying to find images of Mercury, with both comets passing. As you have obviously realized they're doctoring the images before releasing and then not even releasing those on time.
ReplyDeleteThe soho stereo ahead, showed a type of..unusual ray form..from the sun, hitting ISON around the 8th to the 10th. Instead of round wave form as usual, it was a spiked black wave, that shot quickly and then rolled back. ISON appeared to take it on the nose, there seemed to be the suggestion of an explosion with and enlarging field of white, then the white formed a spike and went through the nose into the body, and again expanded in a grey color. The exterior 'white' field, at that point went black. Today, in the news was the claim that ISON had been hit on the 15th, and was breaking up. This is a lie.
When it passed by Mars, it had to have struck Mars with an electrical type of discharge. Mars now has a coma like a comet. So much for the propaganda that coma's are caused by ice. What is ticking me off, is that the only pictures of Mars that can be found are the amateurs who faithfully report what they see to the public. NASA has removed all of the pictures they had to have had, with all the machinery on the ground there, of this occurrence.
Enki, is what they are misspelling to 'Encke', and Ison, were supposed to have swiped Mercury the same way. Not only are there missing 'days' from the satellite images the images from the stereo since the 16th have half the page missing. Of course, it is the half with ISON.
My friend, who is madly texting me about your article, wishes me to say thank you as well. And "At least Russia is showing more info than DoD owned NASA," even though he's not telling us all of it either. She said "Doesn't THAT make you feel proud to be a U.S. citizen?"
Thank you for the update.