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Bright Comet Spotted Streaking Toward Sun
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 02:22 pm ET
27 April 2001
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comet_soho_011024 A bright comet was spotted speeding toward the Sun on Monday, Oct. 22. Images of the comet, produced by the SOHO spacecraft, were released Wednesday. | Watch the Video | | A very bright Sun-grazing comet was discovered by SOHO while a pair of coronal mass ejections are heading for Earth. [ACTIVATE] | SOHO sits between Earth and the Sun and for six years has monitored solar activity. During that time, it has serendipitously recorded 365 comets. Comets, like everything in the solar system, orbit the Sun. But some are lured by gravity to very close encounters with the Sun. A few are swallowed. Solar radiation heats a comet and burns off some of the ice and dust that it is made of, creating a cloud of material and a tail. The dust scatters sunlight, making the comet bright. In the new image, the comet's tail can be seen to grow as it approaches the Sun. In the images, expanding clouds charged particles are seen leaving the Sun. This energy will likely strike our Earth's magnetosphere on Oct. 24 or 25 and trigger a new round of geomagnetic activity with possibly increased levels of aurora, or Northern Lights, scientists said. In all these images the shaded central disk is a mask in the instrument that blots out direct sunlight. The white circle added within the disk shows the size and position of the visible Sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency.
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