14 DAY TRIAL // Comet ISON, which is now fast approaching the sun, has been billed as the comet of the century as it should become incredibly bright as it circles around our parent star, later in the year. But there's a big caveat, the comet first has to survive its encounter with the sun.
It's quite common for the sun's gravity and radiation to break up comets, which are largely made of ice. If that were to happen to ISON, we won't be seeing any spectacle.
However, the latest data indicates that ISON has every chance of escaping its close encounter relatively untouched and putting on a great show for us.
Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory and Kevin Walsh of the Southwest Research Institute have done several simulations and concluded that, as long as ISON has a fairly standard makeup and characteristics, it should come out the other side of the sun still in one piece.
The comet is still not close enough to get very precise measurements of its size and makeup, so there's still a chance things can go wrong, but the most likely scenario is that it escapes.