An unusual sungrazer skimmed past the Sun in February, as captured by ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
A new comet was discovered sling-shotting around the Sun, as seen in this image from February 20, 2015, by the SOHO observatory; the Sun is blocked in this image, called a coronagraph, so that the dim light of its atmosphere, or corona, is visible. Image credit: ESA / NASA / SOHO / Hill.
The newly-discovered comet – the 2,875th comet discovered by SOHO – is somewhat unusual as it’s not form any known family of comets.
“It’s a non-group comet, meaning that it does not appear to be related to any other comet or comet family that we have on record,” said Dr Karl Battams, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC.
Most comets seen by SOHO belong to the Kreutz family and are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago.
The new comet is also interesting because the vast majority of comets that come close enough to the Sun to be seen by SOHO do not survive the trip.
Known as sungrazers, these comets usually evaporate in the intense sunlight.
This comet made it to within 3.5 million km of the Sun’s surface – but survived the trip intact.
“There’s a half-decent chance that ground observers might be able to detect it in the coming weeks,” Dr Battams said.
Since launching in 1995, SOHO has become the number one comet finder of all time.
