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[Music]

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my name is Carl bottoms I'm a

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computational scientist at a Naval

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Research Lab and for nearly seventeen

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years I've been in charge of NASA's

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sungrazer project sungrazer project is a

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citizen science project that allows

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anyone in the world to discover new

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comets that are seen in images recorded

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by the joint ISA NASA Soho satellite

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recently the project has reached a very

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special milestone Soho has found 4,000

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previously unknown comets in nearly 25

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years so I want to share with you my

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favorite comments that Soho has

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discovered these were a pair of bright

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comets both members of what's known as

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the Kreutz group which is a very large

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family of comets that all follow the

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same path in space unfortunately unlike

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nearly all of Soho's comets

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these guys will completely vaporize by

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the sun's radiation most of Soho's

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comments are what we call Sungrazers

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which means they follow an orbit that

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almost grazes the surface of the Sun but

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we've also discovered a lot of comets

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that stayed just a bit further away from

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the Sun and unlike Sungrazers managed to

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at least partially survive passing by

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the Sun this comet Soho's 420 second

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discovery was found back in 2002

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here we see it swinging around the Sun

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at a seemingly safe distance

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unfortunately it kind of looks to me

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like this comet may have turned entirely

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towards the stored x' the end of the

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movie it it can be hard to know the

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exact fate of comets like this because

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they're often impossible to locate from

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the earth because it's so close to the

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Sun

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one of the great things about Soho's

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Comet discoveries is they also teach us

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things about the Sun here we see what

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looks like a typical bright Sun grazer

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racing through the Lascaux cameras and

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in this case disappearing behind Lascaux

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solid occulting disk and normally this

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is the last we see of them but this

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comment to our absolute astonishment was

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also visible in images of recorded by

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NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

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which looks at the sun's million-degree

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atmosphere and extreme ultraviolet light

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this was the first time anyone had ever

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seen something like this we were

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completely blown away by this result and

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we can use comets like this almost like

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remote probes they allow us to learn

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about the environment close to the Sun

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by watching how the comic is reacting

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within that really extreme environment

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finally this is certainly not the

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biggest or brightest comet soko has ever

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found for me it's absolutely one of the

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most important this is so host 4,000

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common discovery that's a truly

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remarkable milestone for this mission

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duration particularly as it was never

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designed to look at or discover comets

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this milestone is also a huge testament

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to the NASA and ASA

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scientists and engineers and support

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teams that have kept Soho running so

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well all these years and of course

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probably most of all it's a testament to

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the army of citizen scientists who have

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contributed so much free time to

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scouring the Soho images and in helping

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us realize all of this incredible size

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of getting so far here's hoping for

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another four thousand comets

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[Music]