Summing up the ISON debacle

"Comets are like cats. They have tails, and do whatever they want."
                                                                -- Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Here's the full record of ISON's life, and death, and life, and death, compliments of NASA'S Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft in orbit around the sun. You can see it fade at the end:

Here and here are excellent summaries of our adventure with our puzzling, feline comet- which, BTW, had it survived would have lit the skies with a ghostly green glow. Sort of like a green Comet Hyukatake (below),  except closer to the horizon and even spookier-looking.