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sun grazing comet amazes astronomers

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presented by science at nasa

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note to comets stay away from the sun

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on july 5th a fleet of nasa and european

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spacecraft watched what happened when an

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icy comet got a little too close

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a sun grazing comet swooped closer to

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the surface of the sun than we've ever

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seen before says solar physicist dean

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pesnell of the goddard space flight

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center

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and now the solar system has one less

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dirty snowball

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the solar and heliospheric observatory

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saw it first

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using an opaque disc to block the sun's

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glare

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soho recorded the early stages of the

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comet's death the comet grew a long

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bright tail as icy material in its

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nucleus furiously vaporized in the face

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of intense solar heating

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by the time it happened behind the

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sunblocking disk the comet had become

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one of the brightest of the soho era

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since soho was launched in 1996 the

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observatory has recorded more than 2 000

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comets says carl battams of the naval

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research lab in washington dc

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i'd put this one in the top 10 of all

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time

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nasa's twin stereo probes also monitored

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the comet's approach

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with three points of view

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soho plus stereo a and stereo b

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researchers could get a good fix of the

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comet's orbit it was definitely a croix

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sungrazer says badams

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kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the

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breakup of a single giant comet many

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centuries ago

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they get their name from 19th century

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german astronomer henrik kreutz who

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studied them in detail

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several kreutz fragments pass by the sun

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and disintegrate every day

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most measuring less than a few meters

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across are too small to see

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but occasionally a big fragment like

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this one attracts attention

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the best view of all came from nasa's

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solar dynamics observatory or sdo for

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short

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the kreutz debris stream happened to be

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passing right across the solar disk as

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seen from sdo notes battams

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that was fortuitous for sure

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sdo's high resolution cameras recorded

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the comet's passage through the sun's

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atmosphere says pesnell the sdo project

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scientist

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we were able to see the comet vaporized

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before our very eyes the first time we

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have ever seen such a thing

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researchers are studying the video in

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detail to learn more about the doomed

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comet how massive was it what caused the

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comet to glow so brightly

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in some parts of the movie it appeared

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to be even brighter than the fiery sun

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behind it

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and was the comet's tail actually

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wagging

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stay tuned for answers to these and

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other comet questions as the analysis