11/29/2013 – Ephemeris – What is left of Comet ISON?
Ephemeris for Friday, November 29th. The sun will rise at 7:57. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 7 minutes, setting at 5:04. The moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 5:02 tomorrow morning. | A funny thing happened to Comet ISON on its way to perihelion yesterday. It’s nucleus disappeared. It was dimming all morning as it approached the sun. Most of this was visible in the SOHO LASCO C3 and C2 views. The comet was also visible from the STEREO spacecraft currently on the other side of the sun. These cameras are called chronographs because they hide the bright face of the sun with a disk called an occulting disk. Just before the head of the comet was to disappear behind the disk, it disappeared all by it self, what was left was it’s tail. However later something emerged from behind the disk where the comet was supposed to be. I’m guessing it’s the large cloud of debris from the nucleus.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Comet ISON or what’s left of it leaving the sun at 7:07 p.m. (EST) November 28, 2013. Credit NASA/ESA/SOHO LASCO C3. Annotation: mine.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 
Is it possible that the comet got so hot during perihelion that the dust and gases which would have made up the tail were instantly ‘vaporised’ into nothingness and so only as the comet moved away from the severe heat did the tail become visible again?
pffft…it is an alien space probe for sure…
Alien space probe? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. – Carl Sagan and others.
is it possible that whatever is left will pose a threat to earth???
I doubt it. The comet’s remains are following the same orbit as the original comet. Which means that on closest approach to the earth around December 27th, will be almost 40 million miles (64 million km) away. Venus can get a lot closer than that, while Mars can get about 5 million miles closer every 15 or 17 years. That’s also about 160 times farther than the moon.
Comet ISON came a lot closer to earth’s orbit in the last days of October, but of course the earth was 2 1/2 months from actually reaching that point. We’ll get there in mid-January, but I doubt there’s any debris following that far behind a first time comet. If anything, we’d get a few meteors, tops.
That’s my take, as an amateur astronomer.
I saw ison this morning from pensacola, fl at 6:20am for about 15 minutes. I’m not sure about it just being debris or a small nucleus left. I saw it with the naked eye and if it is still that far away from earth this thing may be massive.