***UPDATE*** Evidence Ison Survived

***UPDATE***
Information from the IO9 blog has some pretty disapointing news:

From the blog

• After a weekend of hemming and hawing from experts, the sun-grazing ball of ice and dust has been declared officially dead. Again. Except this time, it's pretty much for sure

As you can see, as of Nov 30 Ison had disintegrated into a dusty smudge.  The Bad Astronomy site has a killer time lapse video
Here

Evidence in the form of  material, appeared, streaming away, on the other side of the sun,  which appeared in  NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory late in the evening on Nov. 28, 2013. This seemed to

indicate that Comet ISON survived, at least in part, it's close encounter with the sun and now it is on a trajectory that will fling it out of the solar system proper.

The question now is whether it is just left over debris  or some portion of the comet's nucleus. Analysis supplied from staff at the NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that it may be at least a small portion of the comet's nucleus.

For more information on Comet ISON: www.nasa.gov/ison

Readying For Comet ISON

 Out in deep space some 6 billion miles from the sun lies an area containing billions of icy bodies.   Every so often one of theses bodies falls out of this area and hurtles sunward. 

In September of 2012 just such an object was discovered by  Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski using a 40 cm-diameter telescope.  Designated comet ISON its  path  will bring it within over 6 hundred thousand miles above the Sun’s  surface on 28 November of 2013.

Both ESA and NASA have  missions that are now planning to observe ISON.  ESA’s Mars Express will be taking photos and analyzing the composition of the comet’s coma for a two week period.   

SOHO, a  joint ESA/NASA mission will observe the comet as it swings around the Sun in November,  to see if the comet survives its close encounter with the sun.

ESA’s Venus Express and Proba-2 will also target ISON during November and December.

December 26 is the best time to observe the comet during its' closest pass to Earth.  Its brightness will be very much reduced however as its close encounter will have burned off substantial amounts of ice and other gasses