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*Two comets racing towards Earth and Sun: ‘unprecedented’
November 23, 2013 – SPACE – NASA
spotted Comet ISON coming on strong on Thursday. An awesome set of
images shows Comet Encke, its tail wriggling, along with Mercury and
Earth. Then ISON enters the field. It looks like a comet race. It’s
evidence, the space agency says, that ISON is still intact and hasn’t
splintered as it approaches the sun. A camera on NASA’s Solar
Terrestrial Relations Observatory captured the action Thursday. Watch
the tails of the comets below. Solar wind, the particles that stream
outward from the sun at 1 million miles per hour, make the comets’ tails
move. – LA Times
Double Comets:
Battams points out another exciting development: Comet Encke and Comet
ISON are converging for a photogenic close encounter. “No they’re not
going to hit each other – in reality they are millions of miles apart –
but as seen from the STEREO-A spacecraft, they are going to get very
close!” he says. “We are probably a couple of days away from seeing two
comets almost side-by-side in that camera, with long tails flowing
behind them in the solar wind. To say that such an image will be
unprecedented is rather an understatement.” Stay tuned for that.