In 2012, the Belarusian Vitali Nevski and the Russian Artyom Novichonok discovereda comet named C / 2012 S1, heading toward the Sun from somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. According to the forecasts of astronomers,At the end of November 2013, it will pass very close to our star and will reach a brightness of magnitude 11.6, equivalent to that of the full Moon., which could make it visible during the day with the naked eye. For a comet to be visible in these conditions is unusual: in the last 332 years it has happened only 9 times.
Experts predict that the comet will pass only 1.866 million kilometers from the Sun when it is in its perihelion or moment of closest approach to Earth. The melting of huge amounts of cometary ice will cause expulse large amounts of dust and gas to form a gigantic tail. In case Comet ISON is not eaten or consumed by the intense heat of the Sun, it will be visible until January 2014.
Interestingly, Comet ISON is following a path very similar to that of the famousGreat Comet of 1680, the first discovered with the help of a telescope and considered one of the most spectacular seen from our planet to date, which was observed by Newton himself.
Comets like ISON are “dirty snowballs” that inhabit the confines of the Solar System in a gigantic envelope made up of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt, which probably formed, along with the rest of our Solar System, some time ago. 4.5 billion years. Occasionally collisions with each other or the “gravitational pull” of a nearby star are capable of “pulling” them out of their cloud, rushing them toward the Sun.
