Newfound Comet to Dive Through Sun Next Week | Observing Sungrazing Comet Lovejoy | Comet Death-Dive Through Sun Dec. 16
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured this shot of a huge coronal mass ejection on Oct. 1, 2011, shortly after a comet dove into the sun (inset, right).
CREDIT: SOHO/NASA/ESA
A newly discovered comet is racing toward a mid-December rendezvous with the sun — a rendezvous that it will likely not survive.
The comet is categorized by astronomers as a "sungrazer" and it is destined to do just that; literally graze the surface of the sun (called the photosphere) and pass through the sun's intensely hot corona, where temperatures have been measured at upwards of 3.6-million degrees Fahrenheit (2-million degrees Celsius).
While the comet will not collide with the sun, most astronomers say the odds are [...]
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Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Timesand other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.
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