Comet ISON Has Quite Possibly Turned Into a Zombie

November 29, 2013, 12:00pm

Timelapse of images from NASA’s STEREO and the ESA/NASA SOHO show Comet ISON growing dim as it passes by the Sun.

Yesterday, the comet ISON, hailed as the “comet of the century,” made its brush with the Sun. After passing just 730,000 miles above the surface of the giant fireball that powers our lives, astronomers initially thought that the comet had been destroyed like an icy, gaseous Icarus. Now, there’s hope that the comet survived, but like a half-mangled zombie, if it has lived on, it’s definitely in a diminished state.

The comet’s pass by the Sun was observed by NASA’s STEREO mission, the joint ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). After passing through perihelion—the point at which the comet was closest to the Sun, which came around 2 PM yesterday—the SDO lost contact with ISON, which led observers to believe that the comet had broken up completely.

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But this morning, dust trails were observed on the comet’s expected trajectory, which means a piece of ISON may have survived.

“It now looks like some chunk of ISON’s nucleus has indeed made it through the solar corona, and re-emerged,” Karl Battams, a comet scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, told CNN. “It’s throwing off dust and (probably) gas, but we don’t know how long it can sustain that.”

In other words, we’ve quite possibly got a zombie comet on our hands:

It is now clear that Comet #ISON either survived or did not survive, or… maybe both. Hope that clarifies things.
— Dr. Bruce Betts (@RandomSpaceFact) November 29, 2013

An awesome shot of ISON heading towards perihelion, as part of a timelapse available from NASA

Data from the ESA’s SOHO also suggest the comet has survived, despite earlier reports to the contrary:

We’ve also been speaking to our resident comet expert Gerhard Schwehm who offers his ‘quick look science’ interpretation on #ISON: (1/6)
— ESA Science (@esascience) November 29, 2013

…from my initial look at #ISON in today’s SOHO images, it seems nucleus has mostly disintegrated…(2/6)
— ESA Science (@esascience) November 29, 2013

…Will only know if part of #ison nucleus has survived by continuing observations and performing more analysis… (3/6)
— ESA Science (@esascience) November 29, 2013

…bright fan-shape implies lots of material was released & travelling along #ison orbit, not confined in a traditional tail (4/6)
— ESA Science (@esascience) November 29, 2013

…Would be interesting to learn more about composition of debris to help us piece together what’s happened, but we need more time (5/6)
— ESA Science (@esascience) November 29, 2013

Our SOHO proj sci Bernhard Fleck adds “If we knew & could predict everything, I guess it wouldn’t be science anymore!” :) (6/6)
— ESA Science (@esascience) November 29, 2013

Of course, we’re talking about an object that’s tens of millions of miles away and moving at a couple hundred miles a second, so making definitive observations takes time. As Phil Plait notes, it’s going to take a bit until we get solid confirmation either way, but at this point, it appears that ISON has survived its brush with the Sun, even if it’s far from its former glory.

@derektmead