Questions / Comments: sabrina.savage [at] nasa.gov

HOP INSTRUCTION PAGE



HOP Proposer:    McCauley

pmccauley [at] cfa.harvard.edu


As Primary Proposer:

HOP 242:

REASON FOR LACK OF PRODUCTIVITY:

Emission from the comet was not observed, so there is no output. XRT would have seen emission from highly ionized oxygen (O VI and/or O VII). Whether or not the cometary material would reach such a high ionization state in the time span required for XRT to see it was initially uncertain, but there was a strong expectation that AIA would make successful observations at lower ionization states. AIA did not make successful observations, so it is suspected that the comet broke apart significantly prior to perihelion and that there was not enough material left to produce EUV & X-Ray emission.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

The target was Comet ISON, which reached perihelion on Nov 28th, 2013 at a closest approach of 1.7 solar radii with respect to the photosphere.



* As Co-Proposer: