This is an artist's concept of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft preparing to take a sample from asteroid Bennu. Credit:
NASA/Goddard/Chris Meaney
NASA and the Planetary Society are teaming up to give everyone the opportunity tag along on the next mission to an asteroid … well, your name can go along on the trip, anyway! You can submit your name to be added on to a microchip that will be aboard the Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft, which will launch to the asteroid Bennu in 2016 and arrive in 2018.
“We’re thrilled to be able to share the OSIRIS-REx adventure with people across the Earth, to Bennu and back,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson. “It’s a great opportunity for people to get engaged with the mission early and join us as we prepare for launch.”
The spacecraft will spend more than two years at the 1,760-foot (500-meter)-wide asteroid. The spacecraft will collect a sample of Bennu’s surface and return it to Earth in 2023 in a sample return capsule.
The “Messages to Bennu!” microchip will travel to the asteroid on the spacecraft, and once the sample return capsule deploys, the spacecraft will be placed into a long-term solar orbit around the Sun, along with the microchip and every name on it.
You can submit your name at this website. The deadline is September 30, 2014.
After you submit your name, you can download and print a certificate.
“You’ll be part of humankind’s exploration of the solar system — How cool is that?” said Bill Nye, chief executive officer of The Planetary Society.
Participants who “follow” or “like” the mission on Facebook will receive updates on the location of their name in space from launch time until the asteroid samples return to Earth. Facebook fans also will be kept apprised of mission progress and late-breaking news through regular status updates.
The OSIRIS-REx mission goal is to address basic questions about the composition of the very early solar system, the source of organic materials and water that made life possible on Earth, and to better predict the orbits of asteroids that represent collision threats to the Earth. It will collect a minimum of 2 ounces (60 grams) of surface material.
This artist's impression shows one of the three newly discovered planets in the star cluster Messier 67. In this cluster the stars are all about the same age and composition as the Sun. ESO/L. Calcada.
So far, just a handful of planets have been found orbiting stars in star clusters – and actually, astronomers weren’t too surprised about that. Star clusters can be pretty harsh places with hordes of stars huddling close together, with strong radiation and harsh stellar winds stripping planet-forming materials from the region.
But it turns out that perhaps astronomers are beginning to think differently about star clusters as being a homey place for exoplanets.
Scientists using several different telescopes, including the HARPS planet hunter in Chile have now discovered three planets orbiting stars in the cluster Messier 67.
“These new results show that planets in open star clusters are about as common as they are around isolated stars — but they are not easy to detect,” said Luca Pasquini from ESO, who is a co-author of a new paper about these planets. “The new results are in contrast to earlier work that failed to find cluster planets, but agrees with some other more recent observations. We are continuing to observe this cluster to find how stars with and without planets differ in mass and chemical makeup.”
This wide-field image of the sky around the old open star cluster Messier 67 was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The cluster appears as a rich grouping of stars at the centre of the picture. Messier 67 contains stars that are all about the same age, and have the same chemical composition, as the Sun. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin.
The astronomers are pretty excited about one of these planets in particular, as it orbits a star that is a rare solar twin — a star that is almost identical to our Sun in all respects. This is the first “solar twin” in a cluster that has been found to have a planet.
“In the Messier 67 star cluster the stars are all about the same age and composition as the Sun,” said Anna Brucalassi from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and lead author of the new paper on these planets. “This makes it a perfect laboratory to study how many planets form in such a crowded environment, and whether they form mostly around more massive or less massive stars.”
This cluster lies about 2,500 light-years away in the constellation of Cancer and contains about 500 stars. Many of the cluster stars are fainter than those normally targeted for exoplanet searches and trying to detect the weak signal from possible planets pushed HARPS to the limit, the team said.
They carefully monitored 88 selected stars in Messier 67 over a period of six years to look for the tiny telltale “wobbling” motions of the stars that reveal the presence of orbiting planets.
Three planets were discovered, two orbiting stars similar to the Sun and one orbiting a more massive and evolved red giant star. Two of the three planets are “hot Jupiters” — planets comparable to Jupiter in size, but much closer to their parent stars and therefore not in the habitable zone where liquid water could exist.
The first two planets both have about one third the mass of Jupiter and orbit their host stars in seven and five days respectively. The third planet takes 122 days to orbit its host and is more massive than Jupiter.
Star clusters come in two main types: open and globular. Open clusters are groups of stars that have formed together from a single cloud of gas and dust in the recent past, and are mainly found in the spiral arms of a galaxy like the Milky Way. Globular clusters are much bigger spherical collections of much older stars that orbit around the center of a galaxy. Despite careful searches, no planets have been found in a globular cluster and less than six in open clusters.
Another study last year from a team using the Kepler telescope found two planets in a dense open star cluster and the team stated that how planets can form in the hostile environments of dense star clusters is “not well understood, either observationally or theoretically.”
Exoplanets have been found in some amazing environments, and astronomers will continue to hunt for planets in these clusters of stars to try and learn more about how and why — and how many — exoplanets exist in star clusters.
A closeup look at sunspot AR1944 on January 6, 2013, comparing its size to Earth. Credit and copyright: Ron Cottrell.
The team from Slooh will broadcast a live Solar special focusing on the sudden emergence of hyperactivity on the Sun — lately attributed sunspot AR 1944. Right now, the Sun is in what is supposed to be the active phase of its 11-year solar cycle, Solar Cycle 24. While this has been an unusually quiet solar maximum, lately the Sun has been more active.
The broadcast will feature live feeds of the Sun from the Prescott Observatory run by Matt Francis and Slooh astronomer Bob Berman. They will provide live expert commentary during the 30 minute broadcast. The Solar Special will start at 10:00 AM PST/ 1:00 PM EST/ 18:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 15th.
You can watch live, below, or the replay if you missed it live:
Astrophotographer Michael Phillips with the gear used to capture the Jupiter rotation animation. Credit-Michael Phillips
It’s always a thrill to watch the action at Jupiter, as its moons pass in front of and behind the gas giant planet. We wrote recently about this month’s opposition of Jove on January 5th, marking the start of the Jupiter evening viewing season for 2014.
Astrophotographer Michael A. Philips also recently undertook a challenging series of sequences of Jupiter and its moons Io and Ganymede, with stunning results. You can see the motion of Jupiter’s rotation, the Great Red Spot and even a bit of cloud swirl as Io disappears behind Jupiter and Ganymede begins to transit in front and cast a shadow back onto the Jovian cloud tops.
Concerning the capture, Michael wrote on his blog:
“This night was a lucky night. I had not looked at the weather forecast enough to know if it would be good or not. Cold temps aside, I decided earlier in the day to set up and go out with the 14” f/4.5 scope named Akule. As an added bonus, Mitchell Duke tipped me off to a transit of the Jovian moon, Ganymede.”
Note that Jupiter and its moons are currently casting their shadows nearly straight back from our perspective. Expect that to change, however, in the coming months,as Jupiter heads towards eastern dusk quadrature on April 1st and we see the action from a sideways angle. Watch the video in full screen mode and you’ll note that Mike captured some detail on the surface of Ganymede as well! Generally, at the eyepiece, the moons of Jupiter disappear entirely due to low contrast against the bulk of the planet, with only the black dot of the shadow seen… this video capture gives the ingress of Ganymede at the start of the transit a great 3-D appearance.
Webcam imaging of planets has really taken off in the past decade, with backyard astronomers now routinely capturing images that far surpass professional and textbook images from just a decade prior. Great images can be taken using nothing more than a telescope, a laptop, free image stacking software such as Registax, and a webcam converted to fit into an eyepiece holder… you may find that you’ve got the gear sitting around to image Jupiter, tonight.
Mr. Phillips rig, however, is a little more advanced. He notes in the description of the video that he’s using a Flea3 camera from PointGrey Research with a 5x Barlow lens yielding a 9200mm focal length. He’s also shooting at 120 frames per second, and taking successive red, green and blue images for 30 seconds. Finally, a derotation of Jupiter – yes, it really rotates that quickly, even in a short sequence – is accomplished using a sophisticated program named WINJupos.
Video stacking gives processors the ability to “freeze” and nab the best moments of seeing from thousands of frames. Some imagers hand select frames one by one, though many programs, such as Registax, use algorithms to nab the best frames from a preselected percentage of the total shot.
Local seeing conditions also play a key role in image capturing.
“I moved far away from the house as possible, and I think that helped some,” Michael noted. “I also started cooling the spit out of the mirror, aggressively. Even when cooled for a few hours in the winter, the heat in the Pyrex mirror comes back. I think there’s a small heat engine inside the beast!”
For best results, imagers tend to go after planets when they’re at their highest in the sky, and viewed through the least amount of turbulent atmosphere. This is when a planet is transiting the local north to south meridian, and when it’s at opposition, which Jupiter is this month. At opposition, a planet transits at local midnight. The same goes for the best opportunities for visual observing as well.
Shadow transits of Jupiter’s moons are also just plain fun to watch. In an often unchanging universe, they offer a chance to see something unfolding in real time. Jupiter has the fastest rotation of any planet at 9.9 hours, and the large Galilean moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are tidally locked in their rotation, keeping one hemisphere permanently turned towards Jupiter like the Moon does orbiting the Earth. The inner three moons also keep a 1:2:4 orbital resonance, assuring you’ll never see more than three of the four Galilean moons transiting from your line of sight at once. You can see two of the inner three moons, plus Callisto in transit, but never all four at the same time! A triple transit last occurred on October 12th, 2013, and will next occur for observers in eastern Europe and Africa this year on June 3rd.
We’re also currently in the midst of a series of shadow transits for the outermost Galilean moon Callisto, which end in July 2016. Can you identify the different moons by the size and hue of shadows they cast? Sky & Telescope publishes a great table for the ingress and egress of Jupiter’s moons. You can also check them out using the freeware program Stellarium.
The double shadow transit of February 6th as seen at 11:22 UT. Created by the author using Starry Night Education software.
Can’t wait that long? A double shadow transit involving Europa and Callisto occurs in just a few weeks for western North America from 10:20 UT-12:44UT on the morning of February 6th, a chance for another stunning animation sequence…
Gorgeous shot of the Moon-Jupiter conjunction on January 14, 2014 and a beautiful lunar halo, as seen from Ankara, Turkey. Credit and copyright: M. Ra?id Tu?ral
Last night, the Moon and Jupiter snuggled up together in the evening sky, passing within 4°51′ of each other. Folks in Ankara, Turkey got an added benefit to the conjunction, a gorgeous lunar halo. This shot by M. Rasid Tugral is just lovely. The duo stayed together through the night, and you MUST see below for another awesome view of the conjunction at dawn as seen from Pennsylvania in the US:
The morning’s setting Moon and Jupiter, on January 15th, 2014. Photo taken near White Haven, Pennsylvania. Credit and copyright: Tom Wildoner.
So many things make this such a great photo: the conjunction, of course, but the colors, the shadow of the photographer, and the landscape all combine for a simply stunning image.
Thanks to both of our photographers for sharing, and you can always see more great astrophotos at our Flickr page.
If you’re looking for more conjunctions with the Moon, there are a couple coming up: On Wednesday, Jan 22, 2014 mars will be near the Moon, and on Saturday January 25, 2014 the Moon will meet up with Saturn. Find out more at In-The-Sky.org.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Antares rocket blastoff on Jan. 9 from Launch Pad 0A at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, VA lofting the Cygnus resupply vehicle on a mission for NASA bound for the International Space Station. Docking at ISS planned for Jan. 9. Both vehicles built by Orbital Sciences. Photo taken by remote camera at launch pad. Credit: Alan Walters/AmericaSpace/awaltersphoto.com
Video caption: Antares ORB-1 Launch Pad Camera on south side of pad 0A being hammered from Orbital Sciences Antares rocket launch at 1:07 p.m. EST on January 9th 2014, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, carrying the Cygnus resupply spacecraft to the ISS. Credit: Mike Killian/Jeff Seibert/Mike Barrett/AmericaSpace.com/MikeKillianPhotography.com/Wired4Space.com
What’s it like to be standing at a rocket launch pad? Especially when it’s a private spaceship embarking on a history making flight to the space station that’s blasting the opening salvos of the new ‘commercial space era’ heard round the world?
Thrilling beyond belief!
And what’s it like to be standing at the launch pad when the engines ignite and the bird begins soaring by guzzling hundreds of thousands of pounds of burning fuel, generating intense heat and deadly earsplitting noise?
Well for a first-hand, up-close adventure to hear the deafening sound and feel the overwhelming fury, I’ve collected a gallery of videos from the Jan. 9 blastoff of the privately built Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA on a historic mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
The videos were created by a team of space journalists from a variety of space websites working together to create the best possible products for everyone’s enjoyment- including Alan Walters, Mike Killian, Matt Travis, Jeff Seibert, Mike Barrett and Ken Kremer representing AmericaSpace, Zero-G News, Wired4Space and Universe Today.
Video caption: Close up camera captures Antares liftoff carrying the Cygnus Orb-1 ISS resupply spacecraft. This was composed of 59 images taken by a Canon Rebel xti and 18 mm lens of the Antares Orbital 1 launch to the ISS on Jan. 9, 2013 at NASA Wallops Island, VA. Credit: Ken Kremer/Alan Walters/Matthew Travis/kenkremer.com
Wallops is located along the eastern shore of Virginia at America’s newest space port.
And the pad sits almost directly on the Atlantic Ocean, so you can hear the waves constantly crashing on shore.
Well we always want to be as close as possible. But as you’ll see, it’s really not a very good idea to be right there.
North Side Launch Pad Camera Captures Antares Rocket Launch With Orbital Sciences Cygnus Orb-1 To ISS on Jan. 9, 2013 from NASA Wallops. A GoPro Hero 2 camera captures the launch of Orbital Sciences Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus spacecraft on the Orb-1 mission to resupply the International Space Station. Credit: Matt Travis/Mike Killian/MikeKillianPhotography.com/ZeroGnews.com/AmericaSpace.com
Virtually every camera on the south side got creamed and was blown over by the approaching fiery exhaust fury seen in the videos.
Amazingly they continued taking pictures of the exhaust as they were violently hit and flung backwards.
Luckily, as they were knocked over and fell to the ground, the lenses were still facing skyward and snapping away showing the sky and exhaust plume swirling around and eventually dissipating.
Our cameras capture the experience realistically.
We’ve set them up around the north and side sides at NASA’s Wallops Launch Pad 0A on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS).
Antares soars to space on Jan. 9, 2014 from NASA Wallops on Virginia coast on the Orb-1 mission to the ISS. Photo taken by remote camera at launch pad. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
How do the cameras, called remotes, collect the imagery?
They are activated either by sound triggers or timers.
It takes a lot of hard work and equipment and doesn’t always work out as planned.
But the payoff when it does is absolutely extraordinary.
Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo spacecraft, with the moon seen in the background, is moved into installation position by astronauts using a robotic arm aboard the International Space Station Jan. 12. Credit: NASA
Following a two day orbital chase and an intricate series of orbit raising maneuvers, the Cygnus vessel reached the station on Sunday, Jan. 12, and was berthed by astronauts maneuvering the robot arm at an Earth-facing port on the massive orbiting lab complex.
The Orbital -1 spaceship is conducting the first of 8 operational cargo logistics flights scheduled under Orbital Sciences’ multi-year $1.9 Billion Commercial Resupply Services contract (CRS) with NASA that runs through 2016.
SpaceX likewise has a contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS via their Dragon spaceship. The next SpaceX launch is slated for Feb. 22.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orbital Sciences, SpaceX, commercial space, Chang’e-3, LADEE, Mars and more news.
This Cygnus launched atop Antares on Jan. 9 and docked on Jan. 12 Cygnus pressurized cargo module – side view – during exclusive visit by Ken Kremer/Universe Today to observe prelaunch processing by Orbital Sciences at NASA Wallops, VA. ISS astronauts will open this hatch to unload 2780 pounds of cargo. Docking mechanism hooks and latches to ISS at left. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.comSpace journalists Ken Kremer/Universe Today (left) and Mike Killian and Alan Walters of AmericaSpace (center, right) setting remote cameras at Antares launch pad amidst bone chilling cold for the imagery featured herein. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Image from the "tail cam" on SpaceShipTwo of engine ignition. Credit: Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic released video from SpaceShipTwo’s flight test last Friday, January 10, 2014. This was the third supersonic, rocket-powered test of the Virgin Galactic system after dozens of successful subsonic test flights. The pilots Dave Mackay and Mark Stucky tested the spaceship’s Reaction Control System, the newly installed thermal protection coating on the vehicle’s tail booms, and the “feather” re-entry system, all with great success.
See some images from the flight below.
You can read our coverage from Friday’s test flight here.
Image from SpaceShipTwo’s third powered flight on January 10, 2014. Credit: Virgin Galactic.Feathered Flight during Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo’s third powered flight on January 10, 2014 over the Mojave desert. This image was taken by MARS Scientific as part of the Mobile Aerospace Reconnaissance System optical tracking system.
A mosaic of 67 images from the Mars Express spacecraft of Kasei Valles on Mars. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU (G. Neukum)
Over 3 billion years ago, dramatic flood events likely carved this gigantic channel system on Mars. It extends some 3,000 km and covers over 1.55 million square kilometers. ESA released this flyover video today, on the 10th anniversary of the Mars Express spacecraft’s launch to the Red Planet on January 14, 2004.
ESA describes the scene in the video:
The scene spans 987 km in the north–south direction, 19–36°N, and 1550 km in the east–west direction (280–310°E). It covers 1.55 million square kilometers, an area equivalent to the size of Mongolia.
Kasei Valles splits into two main branches that hug a broad island of fractured terrain — Sacra Mensa — rising 2 km above the channels that swerve around it. While weaker materials succumbed to the erosive power of the fast-flowing water, this hardier outcrop has stood the test of time.
Slightly further downstream, the flood waters did their best to erase the 100 km-wide Sharonov crater, crumpling its walls to the south. Around Sharonov many small streamlined islands form teardrop shapes rising from the riverbed as water swept around these natural obstacles.
The International Space Station captured as it passed in front of the Moon on Dec. 6, 2013, as seen from Puerto Rico. Credit and copyright: Juan Gonzalez-Alicea.
We can dream, right? … because we’d all love to have a space station on the Moon. But this is as close as we’re going to get for the foreseeable future, anyway. Juan Gonzalez-Alicea of Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe in Puerto Rico captured this great image of the International Space Station crossing in front of the crescent Moon on Dec. 6, 2013. He used a Canon 7D with a 300 mm lens, and actually got a fair amount of detail. A shot like this is tricky, as from our vantage point on Earth, it takes just a half second for the International Space Station to fly across the face of the Moon, so timing is everything!
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Hey, remember Comet C/2012 S1 ISON? Who can forget the roller-coaster ride that the touted “Comet of the Century” took us on last year. Well, ISON could have one more trick up its cosmic sleeve –although it’s a big maybe — in the form of a meteor shower or (more likely) a brief uptick in meteor activity this week.
In case you skipped 2012 and 2013, or you’re a time traveler who missed their temporal mark, we’ll fill you in on the story thus far.
Comet ISON was discovered by Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski on September 21st, 2012 as part of the ongoing International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) survey. Shortly after its discovery, researchers knew they had spotted something special: a sungrazing comet already active at over 6.4 Astronomical Units (A.U.s) from the Sun. The Internet then did what it does best, and promptly ran with the story. There were no shortage of Comet ISON conspiracy theories for science writers to combat in 2013. It’s still amusing to this day to see predictions for comet ISON post-perihelion echo through calendars, almanacs and magazines compiled and sent to press before its demise.
ISON back in the day. Credit-Efrain Morales Rivera, Jaicoa Observatory Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
The frenzy for all things ISON reached a crescendo on U.S. Thanksgiving Day November 28th 2013, as ISON passed just 1.1 million kilometres from the surface of the Sun. Unfortunately, what emerged was a sputtering ember of the comet formerly known as ISON, which faded from view just as it was slated to reenter the dawn sky.
Hey, we were crestfallen as well… we had our semi-secret dark sky site pre-selected for ISON imaging post-perihelion and everything. Despite heroic searches by ground and space-based assets, we’ve yet to see any compelling recoveries of Comet ISON post-perihelion.
This week, however, Comet ISON may put on its last hurrah, in the form of a minor meteor shower. We have to say from the outset that we’re highly skeptical that an “ISON-id meteor outburst” will grace the skies. Known annual showers are fickle enough, and it’s nearly impossible to predict just what might happen during a meteor shower with no past track record.
But you won’t see anything if you don’t try. If anything is set to occur, the night of January 15th into the 16th might just be the time to watch. This is because the Earth will cross the orbital plane of ISON’s path right around 9:00 PM EST/2:00 UT. Last year, ISON passed within 3.3 million kilometres of the Earth’s orbit on its inbound leg. Earlier last year, ISON was estimated to have been generating a prodigious amount of dust, at a rate of about 51,000 kilograms per minute. Any would-be fragments of ISON outbound would’ve passed closest to the Earth at 64 million kilometres distant on the day after Christmas last year. Veteran sky observer Bob King wrote about the prospects for catching ISON one last time during this month back in December 2013.
A simulation showing Earth crossing the plane of Comet ISON’s orbit early on January 16th. Credit: NASA/JPL Solar System Dynamics Small Body Database Browser.
Another idea out there that is even more unlikely is the proposal that dust from Comet ISON may generate an uptick in noctilucent cloud activity. And already, a brief search of the internet sees local news reports attempting to tie every meteor observed to ISON this week, though no conclusive link to any observed fireball has been made.
The radiant to watch for any possible “ISON-ids” sits near the +3.5 magnitude star Eta Leonis in the sickle of Leo. Robert Lundsford of the American Meteor Society notes in a recent posting that any ISON-related meteors would pass through our atmosphere at a moderate 51 kilometres a second, with a visible duration of less than one second.
Note that meteor activity has another strike against it, as the Moon reaches Full on the same night. In fact, the Full Moon of Wednesday January 15th sits in the constellation Gemini,just 32 degrees away from the suspect radiant!
Another caveat is in order for any remaining dooms-dayers: no substantial fragments of ISON are (or ever were) inbound and headed towards our fair planet. Yes, we’re seeing rumblings to this effect in the pseudoscience netherworlds of ye ole Internet, along with ideas that ISON secretly survived, NASA “hid” ISON, ISON cloaked like a Romulan Bird of Prey, you name it. Just dust grains, folks… a good show perhaps, but nothing more.
As near as we can tell, talk of a possible meteor shower generated from Comet ISON goes all the way back to a NASA Science News article online from April 2013. Radio observers of meteor showers should be alert for a possible surge in activity this week as well, and it may be the case that more radio “pings” will be noted than visual activity what with the light-polluting Full Moon in the sky. The radiant for any would-be “ISON-ids” transits highest in the sky for northern hemisphere observers at around 2 AM local.
But despite what it has going against it, we’d be thrilled if ISON put on one last show anyhow. It’s always worth watching for meteor activity and noting the magnitude and from whence the meteor came to perhaps note the pedigree as to the shower it might belong to.
The next annual dependable meteor shower won’t be until the night of April 21st to the 22nd, when the Spring Lyrids are once again active. And this year may just offer a special treat on May 24th, when researchers have predicted that the Earth may encounter debris streams laid down by Comet 209P LINEAR way back in 1803 and 1924… Camelopardalids, anyone? Now, that’s an exotic name for a meteor shower that we’d love to see trending!
-Catch sight of any “ISON-ids?” we’d love to see ‘em… be sure to post said pics at Universe Today’s Flickr pool.
