It seems that old comets never die, they just fade way…or at least they do in the case of Comet ISON — the not so “comet of the century.”

NASA reports that ISON likely endured its extremely uncomfortable encounter with the Sun, but new evidence suggests that whatever emerged on the other side of the Sun on Thursday evening may have just said its final goodbye.

Despite disappearing during its final approach to the Sun, material from the comet eventually appeared on the other side of the Sun. Many scientists declared ISON dead when NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and several ground-based solar observatories lost track of the comet. They reasoned that ISON had probably disintegrated completely while journeying so close to the solar furnace.

However, a streak of bright material streaming away from the great ball of fire appeared in the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar Heliospheric Observatory on Thursday evening, giving astronomers hope that the comet had endured the Sun’s extreme temperatures.

When ISON emerged, scientists weren’t sure whether the material was debris from the comet or if some part of the comet’s nucleus had survived intact. A closer examination by astronomers with the space agency’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign eventually determined that a small part of the nucleus had survived.

Sadly, it appears that ISON has now faded away.

“I *do* think that something emerged from the Sun, but probably a v.small nucleus or “rubble pile”, and I fear that may have now dissolved,” Karl Battams, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory, wrote.

Though ISON may have never turned into the “comet of the century” that everyone was hoping it would, astronomers point out that its journey to the Sun has given scientists a wealth of information for future analysis.

“Over the past year, we’ve amassed what we believe to be the largest single cometary dataset in history from one of — if not the most — successful coordinated observing campaigns in history,” Battams wrote. “That data is going to tell us a lot, but is going to take a seriously long time to sort through. We’ve had a crazy year, an even crazier past few months, and a truly insane couple of days. But everything we get out of this will make it more than worth it, and for me it’s just a privilege to have played a part in this unprecedented and extraordinary event.”

In fact, astronomers plan on looking at ISON’s brightness changes to identify the composition of the comet, which contains material collected during the formation of the solar system billions of years ago.