A NASA spacecraft has captured its best video yet of the icy Comet ISON streaking toward a Thanksgiving Day encounter with a sun, a close shave that the comet might just not survive.
The latest video of Comet ISON comes from NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft, one of several sun-watching space observatories tracking the comet’s close encounter with the sun on Thursday (Nov. 28).
“This movie from the spacecraft’s Heliospheric Imager shows Comet ISON, Mercury, Comet Encke and Earth over a five-day period from Nov. 20 to Nov. 25, 2013,” NASA officials wrote in a video description. “The sun sits right of the field of view of this camera.” [Comet ISON’s Thanksgiving Sun Encounter: Complete Coverage]
Known officially as C/2012 S1 (ISON), Comet ISON is what scientists call a “sungrazer” comet because its orbit brings it extremely close to the sun. It is that extremely close solar shave, less than one diameter of the sun away, that has scientists guessing as to whether ISON will survive the encounter.
In the video, Comet ISON appears as a bright object streaking from left to right as it draws ever closer to the sun. Comet Encke, meanwhile, appears as a
