A fascinating breaking update by BP Earthwatch. People lost their jobs over the disclosure of these pictures. There appears to be a large object to the left of where all of the cameras were trained as ISON reached perihelion. When BP returned to the archives, the images had been scrubbed. A typical chess move of look right while I go left. But, fortunately BP had it all recorded for the world to see.
The many phases of ISON foreshadowed in a film many months before its official discovery: