ISON Brightens

ISON, now about 60 million miles from Sol, is rapidly approaching the sun for rendezvous on Thanksgiving Day. On Thursday morning I viewed ISON with my 11" SCT. Visually, ISON had a brighter, more well defined nucleus and extended coma than it did just a few days ago. I imaged ISON with my Canon 50D piggyback on the SCT but the exposures were too short to bring out the detail of the tail. And since ISON is getting lower in the sky this is only going to get worse. Of course, ISON should be brightening even more as she gets closer to the sun. If the weather here in MD doesn't clear up soon I'll have to move the scope to another location to get a better view of the SSE horizon.

The photo below, taken by Damian Peach of Selsey, England, on November 10 thru a 4.3-inch refractor, is one of the best I've seen thus far from an amateur astronomer.