A giant ball of stone, ice and metal could not stand rapprochement with a star and shattered into pieces. 
Photo from open sources Photo: NASA The brightest comet century – ISON (C / 2012 S1) – could not stand the approach to the Sun and, according to According to NASA employees, it burned like Icarus, leaving behind just a cloud of dust. Astronomers who have watched a comet for a long time, expected that it will approach the Sun by a record 1.16 million km – 150 times closer than the Earth, – however, it disappeared from sight instruments almost a day before rapprochement. Scientists suggest that the comet fell into pieces because it could not stand high temperature, falling into the gravitational field of the sun. Similar already happened to Comet Lovejoy in the fall of 2011: then high temperature literally tore the comet to pieces. Astronomers however hoped that with ISON everything will be different since this comet was much larger: the diameter of its core was several kilometers. In addition, ISON could have time to move away from the Sun due to its high speed – up to 380 km per second. However, professor Tim O’Brien from the Jodrell Bank Observatory anyway compared the comet’s passage past the Sun with throwing a snowball into the fire: ISON It was a giant ball of metal, stone and ice. Exactly ice promised an unprecedented spectacle to earthlings: scientists assumed that ISON, if she manages to fly past the Sun, will become the brightest comet in at least the last hundred years. She should have warmed up up to + 2760 ° С, and the tail melting from approaching the Sun should be left behind her ever brighter shimmering track. Some even thought that she can eclipse the moon and become visible to the naked eye in daytime. Observe the comet with simple binoculars and small Telescopes have been available since the beginning of November.
ISON was opened on September 21, 2012 by the Belarusian amateur astronomer Vitaly Nevsky and Artem Novichonkov of Petrozavodsk. Presumably, this comet appeared in times the formation of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. ISON never visited the inside of our planetary system before originated from the Oort cloud, a reservoir of ice bodies outside the orbits of Neptune. Before ISON, the most famous among these stars was Halley’s comet, which was last observed in 1986. Now, researchers are likely to focus on studying other comets. For example, in November next year, the European the space agency will try to land the landing module and place the probe on the nucleus of comet 67P / Churyumov – Gerasimenko, and in October will be able to observe the comet Siding Spring, which will fly 100 thousand km from Mars. However, neither one nor the other overshadow ISON will fail.
Nikolay VODYANITSKY
Time Stones NASA Sun
