On May 1 and 2, Ernesto Guido and Nick Howes of the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy captured images of the 2013 Comet ISON utilizing a 2-meter Ritchey-Chretien Liverpool Telescope. Meanwhile, scientists are gearing up to launch a balloon mission project that will observe the closest approach of Comet ISON to planet Earth.

According to Nick Howes, they were able to corroborate with the April 10 Hubble Space Telescope images that show similar Comet ISON tail structure. Based on the Remanzacco Observatory images, the May 1 image shows an initial estimation on the comet's tail length is about 28 arc seconds while the May 2 image calculates that the Comet ISON's distance from the Sun is about 581 million kilometers (361 million miles) away.

Photo: Remanzacco Observatory/Ernesto Guido/Nick Howes

A balloon mission project called Balloon Rapid Response for ISON or BRRISSON intends to acquire high-quality analysis on the approaching comet that could shine brightly even in broad daylight in November and December 2013.

Project BRRISON would use a balloon to take instruments above much of the Earth’s atmosphere in an effort to study Comet ISON.
Photo Credit: Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute sponsors the BRRISSON project and the team is moving quickly to meet the very important time limit.

"We will be going from discovery of Comet ISON to start of the launch window for the balloon within one year," declared Andrew Cheng, the BRRISON project's principal investigator and chief scientist in the Space Department at APL in Laurel, Maryland.

The Comet ISON has been officially identified as C/2012 S1 (ISON) after Russian amateur astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok's discovery in September 2012.

Take a look at the video below that shows NASA's comet path through the inner Solar System as it makes its closest approach to the Sun and planet Earth on November 28 and December 26, respectively.

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