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Comet ISON has been destroyed

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25143861

Comet Ison was severely battered in its encounter with the Sun, and largely destroyed.
Telescopes saw the giant ball of ice and dust disappear behind the star, but only a dull streamer emerge.
Astronomers continued to search for the object, but it eventually became clear that the much vaunted "Comet of the Century" had gone out with a whimper.
Despite its great size, Ison was probably torn apart in the immense heat and tidal forces so close to the Sun.
The European Space Agency's experts on the Soho Sun-watching satellite called the death of the comet at about 21:30 GMT.
"Our Soho scientists have confirmed, Comet Ison is gone," Esa's twitter feed announced.
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Shame. Was hoping for the same view we had with Comet McNaught in 2007.
 
I guess since it will now never be a danger to Earth I have to go with this being a good thing. [not that it would have hit us this time]
 
It was too low on the horizon for us to see (not that it would be invisible, but we ALWAYS have a band of cloud on the horizon where we are).

Some people in Auckland got photos though.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25143861

Comet Ison, or some part of it, may have survived its encounter with the Sun, say scientists.
The giant ball of ice and dust was initially declared dead when it failed to re-emerge from behind the star with the expected brightness.
All that could be seen was a dull smudge in telescope images - its nucleus and tail assumed destroyed.
But recent pictures have indicated a brightening of what may be a small fragment of the comet.
Astronomers admit to being surprised and delighted, but now caution that anything could happen in the coming hours and days.
This remnant of Ison could continue to brighten, or it could simply fizzle out altogether.
Karl Battams wrote on the Nasa Comet Ison Observing Campaign blog: "It does appear that at least some small fraction of Ison has remained in one piece and is actively releasing material.
"We have no idea how big this nucleus is, if there is indeed one. If there is a nucleus, it is still too soon to tell how long it will survive.
"If it does survive for more than a few days, it is too soon to tell if the comet will be visible in the night sky."
The European Space Agency, too, which had been among the first organisations to call the death of Ison, has had to re-assess the situation. A small part of the nucleus may be intact, its experts say.
How much of the once 2km-wide hunk of dirty ice could have survived is impossible to say.
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Here's hoping.
 
Cheer up, everyone! Ison only hid. NASA and ESA re-discovered it. Here is the first pic of it outside the corona:

komet-ison-hat-ueberlebt-100~_v-image512_-6a0b0d9618fb94fd9ee05a84a1099a13ec9d3321.jpg


source: http://www.br.de/themen/wissen/komet-ison-c2012-s1-114.html [in German]

The trajectory didn't change much (see the video posted by trekkiedane) which indicates that there was no really significant loss of matter. Had it crumbled, the parts would now fly faster and in a much wider curve.*

And that a huge snowball sheds a few lbs when brushing something really hot was to be expected.

At any rate, those of us who haven't seen Ison yet get another chance in a few days, shortly before sunrise :)

_______
* faster because E = (m*v²) : 2 and since E is a constant, the velovity must rise when the mass gets less.

And wider because in a light object the centripetal force would work less well than in a heavy one Fcent. = (m*v²) : r

(admittedly, that last formula is only an approximation. It is true only in very short time frames. But the basic tendency is the same and a single day is damned short in cosmic dimensions)
 
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German science news claim that it suffered severe damage but that there must still be some pretty massive thing sticking in the gas/dust cloud. Interestingly, it does not shed much mass anymore (which means that most of its volatile matter must have gotten pulled away by the sun. I think we can assume that this was the ice and steam surrounding the comet and that what's left now is a solid stone core.)

The surrounding gas and dust is still too thick to look through it at the core. The leftovers of the comet will not be visible to the naked eye anymore (a pity!) and it's constantly getting darker but at least it still flies on.
I think technically it's now something between a comet and an asteroid.

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/ison101.html (in German)
 
Close enough to Sydney, Australia, as to make no difference.

I remember when I was a kid seeing Comet Bennett in 1970, that was spectacular, a clear autumn moring in outback Australia. I want to relive that.
 
And... now it's destroyed again. This comet is like the Black Knight. "Tis but a scratch! Have at you!"

Comet ISON Is No More, NASA Says

by Mark Memmott
December 02, 2013 12:28 PM

Comet ISON, a "shining green candle in the solar wind," is no longer with us, NASA declared Monday morning in a tribute to what many hoped would be the "comet of the century."

On NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign website, astrophysicist Karl Battams writes that ISON was "born 4.5 billion BC, fragmented Nov. 28, 2013 (age 4.5 billion yrs old)."

...

Battans writes there that "while it is conceivable that small chunks of ISON's nucleus still exist, that possibility looks increasingly unlikely and it is with more than a little sadness that we have to declare the comet lost."

As we posted over the weekend, the initial word after ISON's close fly-by of the sun on Thanksgiving Day was that it likely didn't survive the encounter. Then there was more hopeful talk that it just might have held together. Now, NASA has given up that hope.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248202813/comet-ison-is-no-more-nasa-says
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Personally, I think the Sun is being profiled as the killer because it's a G-type Main-Sequence Star, and that another "Star" is more likely the real killer:

VhgV3yN.jpg
 
LOL! Great minds! I was just going to say that the comet is a bit like Obi Wan: it duels, sheds its cloak and dissolves. Perhaps to return unexpectedly in a different form.

Was the tail somewhere on our planet's plane? Any chance we might fly through it? With a little luck there could at least be a few meteorites.


What puzzles me thoroughly is the trajectory. I mean, look at the pic: there was not much of a change of course after the encounter. The new course was very close to what one would expect after an undamaged swing-by.
That would indicate only a small loss of mass. So, how can the big rest of that mass suddenly vanish?
Had it split up into several bits, we'd have seen it, wouldn't we? There would be several fragments fanning out.
If it really got destroyed, it would have to have crumbled into dust very suddenly. We would have seen an explosion and there appears to have been none.
But what else could cause such a sudden disruption?

Could it possibly have crashed into something we didn't notice? A tiny asteroid perhaps, or some piece of space junk?
 
The discovery channel a few days ago ran a special that pretty much summed things up as far as how hyped the comet was. They called it 'The Hunt for the Supercomet." While interesting, it was way overblown in how important the comet was, but in the end they did admit how much of a disappointment the comet was. Yeah, so more like Superdud.

The next comet already proposes to be more interesting. Keep an eye out for Lovejoy.
 
that seems to be a general trend with discovery channel films these least years. Very lurid headlines and then no real contents. :( A sign of the times, propably *sigh*

Lovejoy sounds familiar. Is that a periodic comet? I seem to recall haveing seen that one a few years ago. Or am I confusing it with a similarly named one?
 
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