Comet Ison likely destroyed as it passes sun

Washington – Scientists claim that Comet Ison was completely destroyed after passing the sun.

Billed as “the comet of the century”, the ball of dust and ice was travelling at 234 miles a second.

But after passing the sun – with temperatures of 2,760 C – it appears to have broken up.

Astronomers used a fleet of solar telescopes to look for the comet after its slingshot around the sun, but to no avail.

Astrophysicist Karl Battams, with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, said he couldn’t see anything that emerged from the behind the solar disk, suggesting that the comet was destroyed.

The comet, with a bright tail, had been on a 5.5-million-year journey to the inner solar system.

Ison has come from the Oort cloud, a belt of comets on the very edge of the Solar System, where it has been for the last 4.6 billion years.

It was discovered last year when it was still far beyond Jupiter, raising the prospect of a spectacular naked-eye object by the time it graced Earth’s skies in December.