Explanation: After failing to appear for Sun staring spacecraft at perihelion, its harrowing closest approach to the Sun,
sungrazing Comet ISON was presumed lost.
But ISON surprised observers yesterday as material still traveling along the comet's trajectory became visible and
even developed an extensive fan-shaped dust tail. Edited and processed to HD format, this video (
,
youtube) is composed of frames from the
SOHO spacecraft's coronographs. It follows the comet in view of the
wide (blue tint) and
narrow (red tint) field cameras in the hours both before and
after perihelion passage. In both fields, overwhelming sunlight is blocked by a central occulting disk. A white circle indicates the Sun's positon and scale.
With questions to be answered and the tantalizing possibility that a small cometary nucleus has survived in
whole or part, surprising comet ISON will be rising before dawn in planet Earth's
skies in the coming days.