It’s still possible that the initial reports of ISON’s demise were exaggerated. “It is now clear that Comet ISON either survived or did not survive, or… maybe both,” Bruce Betts, director of projects for the Planetary Society, said in a Twitter update. “Hope that clarifies things.”
What we know: Not much yet.
We can guess, and some shots would appear that ISON is alive and well..or at least half alive and still moving.
Earlier today everyone, including NASA, pronounced this potentially historic comet dead. That does not seem to be the case as more analysis is done. Joshua Filmer of the site FROM QUAKES TO QUASARS wrote this tonight:
As I stated before, as the comet approached the Sun, something happened and ISON started to smear. It looked like the comet fizzed out before it even got started. Even if ISON disintegrated, scientists were suppose to see debris left over (which would be better for professional study, though not so good for amateur astronomy), but everything, the comet, the tail, everything, just vanished. Dean Pesnell, a project scientist with SDO summarized it most eloquently by saying “I’d like to know what happened to our half a mile of material that was going around the sun. Now’ it’s broken up and I didn’t see anything.”
Currently, material has reemerged from the other side of the Sun’s Corona. This is either a continuation of the tail that ISON left behind, or the comet itself. Current speculation is the dust that we see is simply dust, orbiting exactly as it should. The nucleus is probably lost.
It is pretty fascinating stuff–especially amazing to see so much disagreement still on what we are seeing having emerged from ISON’s encounter with the sun..
This tonight is, as as Phil Plait writes, a comet eager to confuse.
Hopefully definite answers are forthcoming..
Eyes on the sky. We may see a century event after all..
This is where we are with Comet Ison tonight: We have never seen a comet behave like this
