Categories: AstronomySpace

Comet ISON most likely destroyed by the Sun

Image taken at 10:51 am est. 10/28/13. Comet ISON has moved quite close to the sun in this image from ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured at 10:51 a.m. EST on Nov. 28, 2013. This image is a composite, with the sun imaged by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in the center, and SOHO showing the solar atmosphere, the corona. Credit: ESA&NASA/SOHO/SDO

Comet ISON has moved quite close to the sun in this image from ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured at 10:51 a.m. EST on Nov. 28, 2013. This image is a composite, with the sun imaged by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in the center, and SOHO showing the solar atmosphere, the corona. Credit: ESA&NASA/SOHO/SDO

UPDATE 11/29/13 ISON MAY HAVE SURVIVED. Read about it here.

11/28/13 Well bad news everyone. If you did not catch the comet before it approached the sun you’re not going to see it. It appears the plunge towards the sun wrote the final chapter for what could he been the “Comet of the century”.

Read: Comet ISON, Viewing information and Images

Comet ISON probably has not survived this journey,” Karl Battams with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the NASA Comet ISON Observing Campaign told the live video at the Google + hangout today. The comet has not emerged from the far side of the sun it appears as Monty Python put it…it is no more.

There was high hope for a spectacular show in December if ISON survived the journey. What could have been a truly spectacular event has been boiled away by the heat of the sun. Hopefully we will get another chance for an event which will live up to expectations in the not to distant future.

Dan Mantel - KnowledgeOrb Contributor