A doomed comet was discovered near the sun during the total solar eclipse on April 8

The unexpected appearance of a new comet made the April 8 total solar eclipse even more memorable.

Any dedicated “movie fan” will tell you: no two solar eclipses are exactly the same. The weather, solar activity, and the nature of the brief adventure of arriving during a total lunar eclipse and standing in the shadow of the moon ensure that each outing is a unique experience. The same goes for brief glimpses of what’s going on near the Sun, from prominences and pearly-white corona to the structure of bright planets and perhaps a new comet.

Discover

While many plan to try to monitor the periodic comet 12P Pons-Brooks during a total eclipse, astronomer Carl Barthams of the U.S. Naval Observatory reminds us of another possibility. A new sungrazer comet was discovered just a few hours ago. Worachate Boonplod observed the Kreutz family comet in the field of view of the LASCO C3 and C2 imagers on the NASA/ESA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). They are equipped with obscuring coronagraphs, which allow them to see near-solar environments. The mission was launched 25 years ago in 1995. Since then, SOHO has proven itself to be a major workhorse in solar heliophysics.

The comet was soon officially named SOHO-5008. That’s right: SOHO discovered more than 5,000 comets during its career. Most of these discoveries are thanks to the efforts of dedicated online sleuths who scoured recent LASCO images.

At the time, the doomed comet was a faint object just a few degrees from the sun. The icy interloper was a difficult target to capture during the fleeting minutes of totality, but at least two dedicated astrophotographers managed to capture it. Lin Zixuan saw its image in northern New Hampshire. Petr Horlek of the Opava Institute of Physics in the Czech Republic photographed the object in Mexico.

Like many other sungrazer comets, this one died shortly after its discovery (less than 12 hours, in fact), like the sunken ship at the Disaster Zone concert in Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Like a diving spaceship.

A brief history of the Sun Raiders

This discovery of SOHO, comets, and solar eclipses has only occurred twice: once in 2008 and again in 2020. SOHO was not designed to hunt comets per se, but its prolific nature as a comet hunter has become an important part of the mission’s legacy. SOHO defines the new comet family of Kreutz, Marsden, and Kracht sungrazers. Consider that before this mission, only sixteen sungrazing comets were known.

A similar example is the Great Comet of 1948, which was also discovered by shocked observers during a total solar eclipse. The other was C/1965 Ikeya-Seki, which went on to become one of the truly great comets of the 20th century. Recently, C/2011 W3 Lovejoy surprised everyone by surviving perihelion, 140,000 kilometers above the sun’s surface. Yet just a year later, the 2012 S1 ISON does not.

It’s an exciting celestial spectacle, with added bonuses.