Comet C/2012 S1 ISON have companions?

Quick. Get the Heaven's Gate Cult on the phone. They can tell us if the object following Comet C/2012 S1 ISON is an alien spaceship...

...What? No one's answering the phone over there?

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by zilebeliveunknown
Here is a better capture, and this italian astronomer actually said that ISON was chased by some asteroids

Linky

Yes, that image clearly shows asteroids, but the OP's image clearly shows hot pixels predominantly (there is one asteroid in there as well, but it's up and to the right of the comet near the top just right of center and is not visible the entire time - it fades out towards the middle of the animation, probably a thin layer of clouds came over as the stars fade too). One shows a point spread function (the asteroids) the others in the OP's do not. The one you posted was also taken a month prior to the OP's. Different part of the sky, different objects in the same field of view. It shows hot pixels as well which also moved with the motion of the telescope over time, but in your example the motion is vertical in the image and roughly perpendicular to the motion of solar system objects within the image including the comet and asteroids.

Incidentally, the photographer of OP's image, Pete Lawrence confirmed it was noise in the image (ie, hot pixels), and that the tracking drift of his telescope was coincidentally in the same direction as the comet over time.

"Pete Lawrence ‏@Avertedvision

@Vim_Fuego there was tracking drift between images and I suspect it was coincidentally similar to motion of comet. I can prove this later "

twitter.com...
Here's a crop centered on the asteroid I found in the OP's image:
i319.photobucket.com...
Based on some astrometry I ran on his image I have identified it as asteroid 2002 TY164, which was the closest asteroid to the comet in the sky that evening (not physically close though - the asteroid was about 3 times closer to earth than the comet but was itself still farther from us than the sun).

edit on 17-1-2013 by ngchunter because: (no reason given)

Jim McCanney has apparently latched onto the nonsense and hysteria surrounding the OP's image:

January 20, 2013 posting ... !!!!!!! ... THIS JUST IN ... IT IS TOO EARLY TO CONFIRM BUT SOME INITIAL DATA SUGGESTS THAT COMET C/2012/S1 HAS AT LEAST ONE COMPANION AND POSSIBLY UP TO SEVEN ... WHEN SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENS ONE HAS TO BE VERY CAUTIOUS BUT AFTER EXAMINING THE DATA THAT I HAVE SEEN I WOULD SAY THAT IT APPEARS TO BE REAL ...

www.jmccanneyscience.com...

Clearly Mr. McCanney does not know how to distinguish hot pixels and camera noise from real objects, and does not know how to identify known asteroids in an image. Where is his astrometric data on these "companions?" Not just pictures of hot pixels, astrometric data that reduces to an orbit consistent with an object in the comet's vicinity, let alone orbiting the comet. A real scientist would have produced such data and shown it before jumping to conclusions like this. Instead we have here a popular pseudoscientist latching onto absolute nonsense that he doesn't understand, which will only further proliferate the false rumor of "companions" with this comet. This is quite similar to how the comet Hale-Bopp hysteria got started, and we all know how that ended...

reply to post by ngchunter


Hale-Bopp 3-28-97

Very nice image ..

Originally posted by ngchunter
Incidentally, the photographer of OP's image, Pete Lawrence confirmed it was noise in the image (ie, hot pixels), and that the tracking drift of his telescope was coincidentally in the same direction as the comet over time.

"Pete Lawrence ‏@Avertedvision

@Vim_Fuego there was tracking drift between images and I suspect it was coincidentally similar to motion of comet. I can prove this later "

twitter.com...

I contacted Pete Lawrence via email and though he's on location doing a shoot and is unable to send me the original image data, he has looked at it and confirmed that it is just noise. Here's what he wrote back to me (I **** out my name from the email).

It is definitely noise **** - if I overlay the frames directly, the dots are in the same place. The original frames were dark frame calibrated but I'm guessing the temperature varied throughout the shoot so some got through. I'm on a location shoot at the moment so no access to the originals at the moment but feel free to quote me.

Pete

Pete Lawrence, pers. comm.

His email address is on his website if anyone wants to confirm this themselves, but please bear in mind I'm not the only person to ask him about this and I'm sure he's getting sick of answering the question so don't spam him with more email unless you really mean it.
www.digitalsky.org.uk...

Notice he mentions temperature variations; the amount of noise and hot pixels visible in astronomical images depends on the temperature of the CCD. That is why we (amateur astronomers) always try to take dark frames on the same nights that we do astrophotography so as to keep the calibration frames consistent with the actual image data. Of course temperatures can change over the course of the night, and the longer the CCD is running the more it will warm up, so this is not a perfect solution and some hot pixels can make it through the calibration process.

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by ngchunter
Incidentally, the photographer of OP's image, Pete Lawrence confirmed it was noise in the image (ie, hot pixels), and that the tracking drift of his telescope was coincidentally in the same direction as the comet over time.

"Pete Lawrence ‏@Avertedvision

@Vim_Fuego there was tracking drift between images and I suspect it was coincidentally similar to motion of comet. I can prove this later "

twitter.com...

I contacted Pete Lawrence via email and though he's on location doing a shoot and is unable to send me the original image data, he has looked at it and confirmed that it is just noise. Here's what he wrote back to me (I **** out my name from the email).

It is definitely noise **** - if I overlay the frames directly, the dots are in the same place. The original frames were dark frame calibrated but I'm guessing the temperature varied throughout the shoot so some got through. I'm on a location shoot at the moment so no access to the originals at the moment but feel free to quote me.

Pete

Pete Lawrence, pers. comm.

His email address is on his website if anyone wants to confirm this themselves, but please bear in mind I'm not the only person to ask him about this and I'm sure he's getting sick of answering the question so don't spam him with more email unless you really mean it.
www.digitalsky.org.uk...

Notice he mentions temperature variations; the amount of noise and hot pixels visible in astronomical images depends on the temperature of the CCD. That is why we (amateur astronomers) always try to take dark frames on the same nights that we do astrophotography so as to keep the calibration frames consistent with the actual image data. Of course temperatures can change over the course of the night, and the longer the CCD is running the more it will warm up, so this is not a perfect solution and some hot pixels can make it through the calibration process.

McCanney has posted again and now claims Pete's images were a NASA hoax to bait him into claiming they showed companions (which he still claims is the truth) and that NASA has released a ScienceCast video containing Pete's footage and the "companions" have suddenly disappeared from it. I hate to say this, but he's just plain lying. You can indeed see Pete's footage in the ScienceCast video in the first few seconds, in fact it's the first segment they show after the title screen. The hot pixels are still visible though, you can see the brightest one right behind the comet still:

He also seems to be of the belief that Hale-Bopp had companions as well, he doesn't even seem the least bit remorseful over what that misinformation lead to. All I can say is, here we go again...

Here is some new images also animation of ISON ..

Distance was around 601.173.000 km ..

files.abovetopsecret.com...



files.abovetopsecret.com...





www.flickr.com...

Here is a frame composed of the last 3 frames, which shows the comet and the tiny dust tail to the south east. www.flickr.com...
Here is a frame composed of all data with comparison synthesis of lights. www.flickr.com...

Orbit of Comet ISON C/2012 S1 ..

Closest approach to Mars will be in first days of October, to the Sun will be 28 November 2013 ..

well, companions or not (and i think yes), ISON looks incredibly large.