It brightened dramatically yesterday making it a "very bright comet, and one that we are truly very lucky to be witnessing", said Karl Battams of Nasa's Comet ISON Observing Campaign
Nasa have released this video of the progress of the Comet Ison taken from one of their satellites
Carole Mundell, Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at Liverpool John Moore University, explained: "This lump of ice and rock has been travelling from beyond the edge of the solar system for about five and a half million years."
It was first spotted on photos taken by Russian's Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using the International Scientific Optical Network telescope last September, while it was still 585 million miles from the Sun and travelling at 90,000 miles an hour.
It is now believed to be travelling at 900,000 miles per hour and will graze the Sun this evening, when the amount of radiation that will be pumped into the comet will be the equivalent of 3,000 fast burning kettles per square metre.
As it is dangerous to look at the Sun, particularly with binoculars, the best way to watch it is online by looking at the images transmitted by the solar satellites SOHO and STEREO.
If it survives its brush with the Sun the comet, believed to be 3km across, will turn around and head back toward the edge of the solar system.
Professor Mundell told BBC Breakfast: "From the ground if you want to look with telescopes in the night sky it will be the beginning of December, possibly at the weekend.
"At the moment it is south of the Sun so as soon as it sets the comet has already gone below our horizon. In a few days time it will actually whip around and be north of the Sun.
"So at sunrise and sunset, if it survives and is bright enough, you may well be able to see it in the dawn or the dusk skies."
Other experts also recommend looking for it at sunset in the skies to the south west.
When asked if Comet Ison could live up to being the "comet of the century", Professor Mundell said: "It could be, these things are incredibly hard to predict and that is one of the things that makes it interesting.
"We are hoping that it will be very bright, at the moment it is very bright and it has been brightening as it gets closer to the sun and so we are hoping that if it survives it will be bright for the next couple of weeks."
She said that they were still uncertain what will happen to the "primordial ices from the beginning of the formation of the solar system" as they are subjected to temperatures of up to 3,000C .
The comet is thought to originate from the Oort cloud, a giant swarm of icy remnants from the creation of the solar system, which sits 93 trillion miles from Earth.
Although other comets, such as Hale-Bopp, are thought to have originated from the cloud this is the first "sungrazer" to have come from the space on the edge of the solar system in 200 years.
Writing on the Nasa blog Mr Battam, an astrophysicist, said that we won't know whether Comet Ison has survived until we see it emerge.
He added: "But we've had this cosmic mystery hovering over us since September of last year, and now, at last, we are on the verge of getting an answer. This will not be a scientific discovery that happens behind closed doors, or announced in a stuffy scientific paper that most people won't read.
"This months-long astronomical cliffhanger is about to reach its conclusion, and will do so live, online, in realtime, for the whole world to see. I hope that everyone appreciates the truly extraordinary nature of this event, regardless of outcome, and I hope that everyone enjoys it as much as us scientists are going to!"
via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGSx2XRej94gYE7EVTaaB3QBIc7Bg&url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10480124/Comet-Ison-moment-of-truth-for-the-comet-of-the-century.html
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