The LASCO C2 camera on the ESA / NASA SOHO observatory shows comet C / 2020 X3 (SOHO) in the lower left corner.
(Photo: ESA / NASA / SOHO / Andreas Moller)
An astronomer spotted a small sparrow flying past the Sun, a rare comet recently discovered, as the world witnessed a total solar eclipse this month.
This comet was first spotted in satellite data by Thai amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod as part of the NASA-funded Sungrazer project, as Chile and Argentina witnessed a total solar eclipse on December 14, NASA reports.
Around the time the eclipse was taken, the comet was traveling at about 7,24,205 km per hour, about 4.3 million km from the Sun’s surface. The comet was about 50 meters in diameter – about the length of a semi-truck. It then disintegrated into dust particles due to intense solar radiation, a few hours before reaching the point closest to the Sun.
Sungrazer is a citizen science project that invites anyone to search for and discover new comets in images from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the NASA or SOHO Solar and Heliosphere Observatory. Boonplod discovered the comet the day before the eclipse.
“He knew the eclipse was coming, and he was eager to see if its new discovery of the comet could appear in the Sun’s outer atmosphere like a small spike in eclipse photos,” the US space agency said in a statement late Saturday. The comet, named C / 2020 X3 (SOHO) by the Minor Planet Center, is a “Kreutz” sungrazer.
This family of comets came from a large parent comet that split into smaller fragments well over a thousand years ago and continues to orbit the Sun today. Kreutz sungrazing comets are most commonly found in SOHO images.
To date, 4,108 comets have been discovered in SOHO images, the 3.524th Kreutz sungrazer spotted, according to NASA.
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