According to original calculations, comet C/2024 S1, discovered on September 27, should actually be visible to the naked eye in the night sky on Halloween. But nothing came of it because the icy snowball got too close to the sun and burned up.
On Monday, the comet reached perihelion (the point closest to the sun), where temperatures rose to about 1,000 degrees Celsius. At this point, the icy components in C/2024 S1’s core had completely evaporated and the small celestial body disintegrated.
With the help of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a probe built by a consortium for the space agency ESA and its American counterpart NASA, astronomers were able to observe the fascinating spectacle in space in detail.
The animation (see above), composed of individual images from the observatory, shows the final moments of C/2024 S1 (see above) on October 28.
Comet from the group of “sun streakers”
The comet was discovered using the Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. It belonged to a group of comets known as Kreutz sungrazers, which come very close to the Sun during their perihelion.
Probe has been working in space for 29 years
The SOHO Space Observatory was launched into space on an ‘Atlas’ rocket in November 1995 and reached its final position two months later – about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
Source: Krone
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