The Comet ISON plunges, and come out of wreckage.
Click for movie. This is a composite of four days of frames taken by the LASCO C3 coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). (The dark blue disk around the Sun is a metal mask blocking the Sun’s overwhelming glare, and the black line is the stalk holding it.)
Comet ISON Update (Mon 1st Dec 2013)
Something of Comet ISON has clearly survived its encounter with the Sun, but astronomers are still unsure exactly what made it; a bit of the nucleus or a cloud of debris? This is where Hubble (photo) will come in. Once it’s safely away from the Sun (Hubble cannot observe objects too close to the Sun, for fear of damaging its delicate optics) and in a good position to be viewed, around mid-December, Hubble will observe ISON to see if there’s anything left of the nucleus.