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A comet nicknamed the “Halloween Comet” disintegrated during its closest approach to the sun on Monday, and the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission captured images of its final moments.
Astronomers first discovered Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) on September 27 via an asteroid-terrestrial impact Last Alert System in Hawaii, and the glowing celestial body quickly earned its nickname after speculation that it could be visible by the end of the month are in the night sky. the month. But as the comet, made up of ice, frozen gases and rock, moved closer to its perihelion – the closest point to the Sun in its orbit – in recent days, it broke into pieces until it eventually evaporated. NASA.
C/2024 S1 was a sungrazer, a comet at a distance of approx 850,000 miles (1,367,942 kilometers) from the sun. Sungrazers often evaporate due to the intense, hot solar atmosphere.
“Comets are very difficult to predict, and sun-grazing comets like this are even more difficult than most. At the time of the discovery, astronomers were somewhat divided on whether it would survive or not, which just speaks to that uncertainty,” said Karl Battams, a computational scientist based at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. Battams is also principal investigator of the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph instrument suite, a set of three telescopes on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, spacecraft that images the Sun’s atmosphere.
The comet reached perihelion at 7:30 a.m. ET on Monday and completely evaporated after passing within 1% of Earth’s distance from the Sun, less than 1.5 million kilometers from the star, NASA said. For comparison: comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan ATLASan Oort Cloud comet that survived perihelion on September 27 came no closer to the Sun than one-third of the distance from Earth to the star. (Our planet is approx 93 million miles(or 149 million kilometers from the sun.)
“Statistically, it is extremely rare for sun-grazing comets to survive (as they fly past the sun),” Battams told CNN in an email. NASAs Sungrazer Projecta citizen science project discovering previously unknown comets, which Battam leads, has discovered more than 4,000 sun-grazing comets and none have survived their perihelion, he added.
A handful of larger, sun-grazing comets have been observed surviving their brief passage past the Sun, like a comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy in 2011. Initially discovered using a ground-based telescope, C/2011 W3 Lovejoy was the brightest Sungrass comet that SOHO has imaged, but these larger comets are “few and far between,” Battams said.
“Between now and 2030, only three known comets are expected to be visible to the naked eye (C/2024 E1, C/2024 G3 and 22P/Kopff),” said William Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, in an e-mail mail. One or two more comets may also be discovered that could become bright enough to see, he added.
The Halloween comet, C/2024 S1, was a member of the Kreutz family of comets, a population of mostly small comet fragments derived from a single parent object that likely disintegrated near the Sun thousands of years ago, Battams said. Astronomers captured images of the Halloween comet as it was visible earlier this month, but he never observed it with the naked eye, he added.
C/2023 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was visible in the night sky without equipment in mid-October, but is now fainter and most likely only visible with a telescope or binoculars. Cooke said. Astronomers originally estimated that the comet would circle back in time in about 80,000 years, but as of… October 14, Observational data revealed that the comet had a new path that could remove it from our solar system entirely.
When conditions are right, comets can leave trails of debris that cause meteor showers as Earth’s orbit encounters their path, such as the October Orionids These are particles from the famous Halley’s comet. The next meteor shower, the Southern Taurids, is expected to peak on the night of November 4 until the early morning of November 5 and also has a parent comet called Comet Encke.
However, the debris from C/2023 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS or C/2024 S1 will not pass close enough to Earth to produce a meteor shower, Cooke said.
How often comets are visible in our skies is variable, with some years producing a handful of the icy bodies that skygazers can see and others not so fruitful, Battams said.
“Historically, comets have always been a source of fascination for people, partly due to the fact that they occur so rarely,” he added. “I am sure that in pre-industrial times, when light pollution was not a problem, some of the comets that humans saw must have been equally awe-inspiring and terrifying!”