Comet ISON Brightens Night Skies in Trip Toward the Sun (Image)

Comet ISON continues to streak across the sky, hurtling toward our sun at a stunning 105,000 mph. Now inside Venus' orbit, there are just 17 more days before the comet reaches perihelion on Nov. 28. But will ISON be the "comet of the century," or will it break apart before it even reaches that point?

Recently, the Chandra X-ray telescope made some successful and interesting detections of comet ISON in EUV and soft X-ray wavelengths. However, it will be a few more days before the results of these observations are properly analyzed and revealed. In addition to this data, though, astrophotographer Damian Peach managed to capture a stunning image of the comet, revealing the new structure in ISON's tail.

The tail of the comet in particular is important for understanding how ISON is evolving over time. The image clearly shows a fork below the main dust tail, which is an ion, or gas, tail. Although scientists see this phenomenon all of the time in comets, this one is the consequence of solar ultraviolet photons stripping electrons off of the neutral gas that has been released from the comet via a process called ionization. As ISON continues to approach the sun, there should be some interesting interactions between its tails and the solar wind, according to NASA.

"I hope I am not crying wolf here, but I honestly believe that there has been some development of the tail structure of this comet today," said Denis Buczynski, a British observer, in an interview with Space.com. "It will be interesting if other images from telescopes in better locations and conditions show this feature to be real."

The comet has continued to hold together, despite its close encounter with the sun. It's becoming increasingly visible to observers with binoculars and small telescopes. While it's still not visible with the naked eye, though, it could very well achieve that level of brightness in late November and early December.

You can track ISON's movements on NASA's website here as it continues to travel across the sky before its spectacular rendezvous with the sun.