[winoneforthegipper]

Yeah but it’s a virgin comet...

It’s just as likely to be a vapor trail of 100k miles and nothing else....as it passes near thanks to a few sunny rays..lol

[Errant]

Most of the fluffy stuff was removed when the sun went nuclear and from eons of solar wind. It'll be an amazing show if the nucleus is 20km in size, as the nucleus will contain 8,000 times the volume of a 1km comet.

And despite what officials are saying, if a breakup occurs at ISON's perihelion, it will be an even more amazing show, as surviving debris streams past the earth at 250,000 mph!

Hopefully at a safe 30 million km distance or more, since even the possibility of a really energetic breakup altering debris trajectories closer to the earth is slim, according to these same officials. lol

[Errant]

Amazing path of C/2013 A1:

You have to have Java enabled to view the NASA interactive viewer at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=c%2F2013%20a1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

Screen shot below: