Animation of SOHO's 1500th comet. SOHO-1500 is located between the two white horizontal bars and the insert in the lower left shows a magnification of the area containing the comet.
Posted on 12/17/2008 7:03:51 AM PST by SunkenCiv
It's the most successful comet catcher in history. SOHO has just reached a new milestone: It has discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all the other discoverers of comets throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission. SOHO's history-making discovery was made on June 25th 2008 by US-based amateur astronomer Rob Matson. This is Rob's 76th SOHO comet find.
When it comes to comet catching, the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory has one big advantage over everybody else: its location. Situated between the Sun and the Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface of the planet, the space inside our orbit is largely obscured because of the daytime sky and so we only clearly see close to the Sun during an eclipse.
Roughly eighty-five percent of the SOHO discoveries, and also this one, are fragments from a once great comet that split apart in a death plunge around the Sun, probably many centuries ago. The fragments are known as the Kreutz group and now pass within 1.5 million kilometres of the Sun's surface when they return from deep space.
(Excerpt) Read more at sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov ...
Animation of SOHO's 1500th comet. SOHO-1500 is located between the two white horizontal bars and the insert in the lower left shows a magnification of the area containing the comet.
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