As comet ISON hurtles toward the sun, its million-year-long journey through our solar system may end with its violent death — or a spectacular sky show.
When the comet rounds the sun on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in America, professional and amateur astronomers alike will await ISON's fate with bated breath. Its tail may get ripped off by a cloud of solar particles, or the sun's brutal radiation and pressure may demolish it completely.
But if ISON makes it out alive, stargazers say, it could provide a breathtaking show visible to the naked eye and possibly live up to the term "comet of the century," as some astronomers have dubbed it.
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