20131204- ISON Is Gone. Dead

Extract from internet source:-

Sad news, comet fans: ISON is no more. It’s a vaporized husk of its former self. A sublimated dirty snowball. Comet ISON is an ex-comet and this time it’s not playing.

This sad turn of events is brought to you by the joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO)’s LASCO instrument that gives a wide-angle view of the sun’s atmosphere (pictured above). For the duration of Comet ISON’s close approach to our nearest star, LASCO has been carefully tracking the comet’s progress. After many heart-stopping hours post-perihelion on Nov. 28, space experts nearly gave up hope — ISON had vanished from LASCO’s view, apparently not surviving the sun’s extreme tidal forces and powerful radiation.

But then, just as the U.S. was recovering from Thanksgiving turkey and wine, ISON re-energized; a component of its roasted nucleus had survived the turmoil and was brightening.

A comet that grabbed attention worldwide for being likened to a massive snowball in space didn't survive its brush with the Sun last week, NASA has confirmed.

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"Though the exact time of ISON's death is uncertain it does appear to be no more. All that is left is a cloud of debris without a nucleus," Alex Young of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center told AFP in an email on Tuesday.

Dubbed the "Christmas Comet", the icy giant described as a massive, dirty snowball skimmed past the Sun at a distance of just 1.1 million kilometres around 1830 GMT on Thursday (0530 AEDT on Friday).

It had been estimated that ISON would undergo temperatures of 2700 Celsius and lose three million tonnes of its mass per second as it made its journey around the sun.

Most astronomers had predicted the comet, with an estimated diameter of some 1.2 kilometres, would not survive the flypast.

Still, some observers had held out a sliver of hope that the 4.5 billion-year-old comet might have survived.

Karl Battams, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, wrote a brief obituary for the comet, formally known as C/2012 S1 (ISON) after the telescope called the International Scientific Optical Network used by the Russian astronomers who spotted it in 2012.

"Never one to follow convention, ISON lived a dynamic and unpredictable life, alternating between periods of quiet reflection and violent outburst," Battams wrote.

"Survived by approximately several trillion siblings, Comet ISON leaves behind an unprecedented legacy for astronomers, and the eternal gratitude of an enthralled global audience."

Reflections

Is our life liken to Ison? Dynamic and 
unpredictable life! Oh yeah!