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ESA/NASA/SOHO
The SOHO spacecraft was
designed to monitor solar outbursts and space
weather. But comets keep crossing its field of view, and the probe is perhaps
just as well known for that fact.
In this image, made on May
24, a rare pair of comets plunge toward the Sun. The hunks of ice and
dust are part of a family, called Kreutz, known for a propensity to get too
close to the thermonuclear furnace. They usually die, obliterated by the intense
heat.
These two comets appeared
to plunge into the Sun, too, but their fates have not been fully determined.
SOHO is a joint project
of NASA and the European Space Agency. Its images have yielded more than 600
comet discoveries over the past six years, most of them by amateurs. Rainer
Kracht, a German armchair
astronomer, first spotted these from images posted to the Web. [Live
Sun Cams]
-- Robert
Roy Britt
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