New Delhi: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission has captured another sungrazing comet disintegrating during its aphelion, or closest approach to the Sun. Humans only became existence of the comet, Comet C/2024 S1 after it was flagged by the Atlas astronomical survey in Hawaii on 27 September, 2024. A month later, the comet has disintegrated. It is likely that the heat from the Sun had already stripped away most of the ice from the comet before it entered into the field of view of the Large Angle and Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) instrument, which covers the disc of the Sun to reveal details of its outer corona, by creating an artificial eclipse within the spacecraft.
The last frame for which Comet C/2024 S1 was visible before it disintegrated. (Image Credit: SOHO/LASCO).
All that was left of the comet as it made a close approach to the Sun was a pile of rubble tenuously held together by weak gravity. What remained of the comet completely vanished during the close encounter with the Sun. The SOHO mission is a collaboration between the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). C/2024 S1 is considered as a ‘sungrazer’ or a comet that approaches the Sun within one percent of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and gets completely vapourised as a result. The comet C/2023 A3 Tsushinchan-Atlas was not a sungrazer, was nevertheless expected to disintegrate as well, but survived the close encounter with the SUn.
How to become a Comet Hunter
The SOHO project spots sungrazing comets all the time, but human eyes and machine learning are together not up to the task to catch all of them. Which is why scientists have put together a citizen science project, to get help from the general public to help finding all the sungrazing comets. The sungrazer project is always looking for volunteers who can go through the voluminous data captured by SOHO to find the sungrazing comets and become a Comet Hunter and find comets from the comfort of their homes. The initiative has managed to discover over 5,000 comets so far.
