A rare 'sungrazer' comet is observed approaching the sun and breaking apart during a total solar eclipse
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse occurred over a wide area, mainly in North America, in which the sun was completely hidden by the moon, and millions of people looked up at the sky and enjoyed the celestial spectacle. At this time, an amateur astronomer reported the presence of a comet that had approached the sun and disintegrated. It is said to be very rare for such comets, called
Spaceweather.com Time Machine
https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=10&month=04&year=2024
ESA - Rare sighting of 'doomed' SOHO comet during solar eclipse
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/04/Rare_sighting_of_doomed_SOHO_comet_during_solar_eclipse
Total solar eclipse reveals tiny new comet moments before it was destroyed by the sun | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/tiny-sungrazer-comet-discovered-photographed-and-destroyed-all-during-historic-total-solar-eclipse
According to Spaceweather.com, an astronomical news site, the sungrazer comet was first spotted by amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod, who lives in Thailand. Boonplod discovered the small comet from a disturbance in the coronagraph observed in real time by NASA's Solar Observatory (SOHO) . The comet has been named SOHO-5008.
Then, Chinese amateur astronomer Lin Zixuan, who had traveled to New Hampshire in the United States, managed to capture a photo of SOHO-5008 heading towards the sun.
Petr Horálek, a researcher at the Czech Institute of Physics in Opava, who was also in Mexico for the solar eclipse, was also able to take clear photos of SOHO-5008 thanks to the clear skies.
by Petr Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava), Josef Kujal (Astronomy Society in Hradec Kralové), Milan Hlaváč
'It's very rare for a comet to graze the sun from the ground,' said Carl Battams, a computational scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and leader of NASA's Sungrazer comet project.
SOHO-5008 was lost from tracking shortly after the photo was taken, and is thought to have disintegrated after possibly getting too close to the Sun. Also, due to limited data that was collected before the comet was destroyed, it is not known how large SOHO-5008 was or how close it got to the Sun.
Sun grazer comets are comets that pass within about 8 million kilometers of the Sun, and were first discovered in the late 19th century. As the newly discovered sun grazer comet has been given a name in the 5000 series, over 5,000 sun grazer comets have been discovered in the observation records of the SOHO satellite, but it was thanks to a total solar eclipse that we were able to observe this small, bright comet approaching the Sun from Earth.
On that day, the periodic comet
By Lin Zixuan
Most sungrazer comets belong to a group called the Kreutz comets , and are thought to be fragments of a giant comet that exploded about 2,000 years ago.
According to Battams, aside from SOHO-5008, only two sungrazers have been discovered during a solar eclipse, in 2008 and 2020.
During the solar eclipse that occurred in Argentina and Chile on December 14, 2020, the sungrazer comet SOHO-3524 was discovered, but it was also discovered by Boonplod, who also discovered SOHO-5008. SOHO-3524 was observed for a longer period of time, so details are better known, and it is estimated to have a size of about 15 meters and to have been moving through space at a speed of about 725,000 kilometers per hour.
'With modern technology and equipment, I think it's not that difficult to see a sungrazer comet during an eclipse, but you still need one key ingredient - a comet at the right time. We got really lucky this time,' Battams said.
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