“Best video yet of comet ISON yet. Burn baby, burn!” says NASA about this time-lapse captured over a five-day period — November 20 to November 25 — by STEREO’s Heliospheric Imager.
A comet’s journey through the solar system is perilous and violent. A giant ejection of solar material from the sun could rip its tail off. Before it reaches Mars — at some 230 million miles away from the sun — the radiation of the sun begins to boil its water, the first step toward breaking apart. And, if it survives all this, the intense radiation and pressure as it flies near the surface of the sun could destroy it altogether.
Would ISON survive? Most probably not. We will see what happens soon.