An amazing video captured by the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a spacecraft jointly launched by NASA and the European Space Agency in 1995, shows how a comet gets fully destroyed while diving towards the sun.
A comet met its demise as it directly dove into the sun, according to Space Weather astronomer Tony Phillips.
In a new video captured by SOHO, it shows a number of objects zooming around the sun, which is blocked by an opaque disk to reduce glare. Seemingly right on top of the sun is Venus, which is bright and easy to spot. Left of center and not that bright, Mars spotted. Just about 10 seconds of the video, the sun-bound comet suddenly becomes obvious and easy to detect.
A comet meets its demise as it directly dove into the sun, according to Space Weather astronomer Tony Phillips.
Such comets that are swallowed by the sun are known as Kreutz sungrazers. They are believed to be small pieces from a single large comet that broke up into little fragmented pieces thousands of years ago when it got close to the sun and the ice binding it together evaporated.
Staying on course, the comet continues to head directly towards the sun, where it striken to the sun's atmosphere and got completely destroyed. This comet is most likely a Kreutz sungrazer, according to Phillips.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) observed a comet dive directly in the sun on August 15, 2019.
Kreutz sungrazers are an interesting group of comets as there is no official definition for them. They have been observed for hundreds of years and were studied by Heinrich Kreutz in the 1880's and 1890's. These comets are thought to be fragments derived from a giant, ancient comet.
Such comets that are swallowed by the sun are known as Kreutz sungrazers. They are believed to be small pieces from a single large comet that broke up into little fragmented pieces thousands of years ago when it got close to the sun and the ice binding it together evaporated.
This is not the first comet that SOHO spotted this summer. On June 20, two comets, one a Kreutz sungrazer and the other a Meyer sunskirter were identified. Citizen scientists detected the pair of comets using data from SOHO and NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft missions as part of the Sungrazer Project.
Incredibly, over half of all known comets have so far been discovered by the Sungrazer Project, according to the project website. Discoveries of new comets can help scientists to study comet orbits, comet composition comet evolution and more. The discovery of sungrazers like the one spotted in this video can additionally support scientific studies of the sun.
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been constantly looking at the sun and its surrounding environment for more than 20 years.
The mission of this spacecraft was to predict space weather but it has made several discoveries about the sun and also noted a number of these sungrazer comets.
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