Down but not Oort?
Comet ISON, presumed dead after its sun-grazing trip yesterday, may have survived … maybe. Something survived, anyway. This NASA image from the SOHO satellite shows a smaller, diffuse tail reforming on Nov. 29th:
Frankly, comet-watchers are pretty stumped by ISON. That’s ok. Science is messy. Considering that this particular chunk of frozen space stuff has been hanging out in the Oort cloud for a few billion years, we’d be forgiven for not knowing everything about it.
Phil Plait has all your updates and background on the ISON undead-comet saga, and future, at Bad Astronomy.
Who’s up for renaming this thing “Comet Icarus”?
(Most excellent comic at top via xkcd)
