NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft is monitoring Comet ISON as it approaches the sun. The latest movie from the spacecraft’s Heliospheric Imager shows Comet ISON, Mercury, Comet Encke and Earth over a two day period from Nov. 20 to Nov. 22, 2013. The sun sits right of the field of view of this camera.
Image Credit: Karl Battams/NRL/NASA STEREO/CIOC.
In this video you can see both comets as their tails whip in the solar wind. The latest movie from the STEREO-A spacecraft’s Heliospheric Imager shows the comet moving in from the left side over a two-day period from Nov. 20 to Nov. 22, 2013. In addition to Earth and Mercury, Comet Encke can also be seen moving through the middle of the view. The sun sits outside the field of view of this camera, located to the right, off-screen, hinted at by the steady stream of particles, called the solar wind, moving in from the right.
