November 28 update #2: ISON is dying before our eyes! As of 2 p.m. EST November 28th, just after perihelion, ISON's head — which swelled to brilliance just hours ago — seems in the latest spacecraft images to have faded right down to nothing at all.
What's left is a long streamer of a dust tail. The tail is destined to be flung widely across the sky as it comes out the other side of the Sun — unless every last bit of it vaporizes away first, which is possible and maybe likely.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft should have picked up the comet's head now, in its narrower, zoomed-in view compared to SOHO's. So far it is seeing nothing, nothing at all.
SOHO's latest LASCO C2 image.
3:30 p.m. EST: SDO's scientists were able to extract nothing of the comet at all as it crossed the SDO field of vew at perihelion.
The LASCO C2 coronagraph saw nothing at all come out from behind the occulting disk covering the Sun when it should have after perihelion.
Not even a headless dust tail.
Comet ISON is no more.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observin ... 61.html?jh
http://cometison.gsfc.nasa.gov/