isoncampaign.org - 9/10/13
Compared to how we think it will look a couple of months from now, comet ISON is still a faint target for astronomers and certainly a challenge for astrophotography enthusiasts. However, that did not stop "amateur" astronomer Bernd Gährken from recording this wonderful star-filled image from his home town of Gütersloh, Germany. Admittedly, we need to look rather closely to be able to spot comet ISON in here, but that certainly does not detract from the beauty of seeing Messier 44 (the Beehive Cluster), our favorite Red Planet, and comet ISON, all in the same image!
Over the next few weeks comet ISON will head closer to Mars, making a close approach to the Red Planet on October 1st of this year at a distance of just 0.07AU (6.5 million miles or 10.4 million kilometers). For about 48-hours surrounding this close approach, active science missions from both NASA and ESA will be attempting extensive observations of the comet. While the Martian spacecraft fleet is not at all designed for studying comets, their array of scientific imaging instrumentation presents the potential for valuable observations of the comet that may help us learn more about its size, composition and levels of activity.
