Comet Eaten By Sun

Comet Destroyed By Sun

A Comet Gets Eaten By The Sun! Check out the videos available on NASA website.

The Solar & Heliospheric Observatory SOHO) is a project of international collaboration between ESA and NASA to study the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and its solar wind. The SOHO spacecraft captured the arcing orbit of a sungrazing comet as it approached the Sun (Jan. 3, 2010) and evaporated. The comet is believed to belong to the Kreutz family of comets that broke up from a much larger comet many hundreds of years ago. They are known to orbit close to the Sun. This comet was one of the brightest sungrazing comets that SOHO has observed in its 14 years of operation. SOHO’s coronagraph instruments block out the Sun with an occulting disk; the white circle represents the size of the Sun. The comet was discovered on Jan. 2nd by Australian amateur astronomer Alan Watson, who was inspecting images obtained by STEREO-A’s Heliospheric Imager on Dec. 30, 2009.

This post is based, in part, on content licensed from E. Wichman from the defunct website www.meteoritesUSA.com that was purchased by SkyFall Meteorites. 

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