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SOHO discovers its 1500th comet
June 30, 2008The ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft has just discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all other comet discoverers throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission.
SOHO's record-breaking discovery was made on 25 June. The small and faint Kreutz-group comet was discovered by US-based veteran comet hunter and amateur astronomer Rob Matson.
Kreutz-group comets, or sungrazing comets have been observed for many hundreds of years. They travel very close to the Sun (if they were to hit it, they would become 'sunstrikers'), with perihelion distance less than 0.01 Astronomical Units (the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun), or some 1460000 km.
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 Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface, we can see regions close to the Sun clearly only during an eclipse.
Roughly 85% of SOHO discoveries 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 km of the Sun's surface when they return from deep space.
At this proximity, which is a near miss in celestial terms, most of the fragments are finally destroyed, evaporated by the Sun's fearsome radiation - within sight of SOHO's electronic eyes. The images are captured by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO), one of 12 instruments on board.
Of course, LASCO itself does not make the detections; that task falls to an open group of highly-skilled volunteers who scan the data as soon as it is downloaded to Earth. Once SOHO transmits to Earth, the data can be on the Internet and ready for analysis within 15 minutes.
Enthusiasts from all over the world look at each individual image for a tiny moving speck that could be a comet. When someone believes they have found one, they submit their results to Karl Battams at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, who checks all of SOHO's findings before submitting them to the Minor Planet Center, where the comet is catalogued and its orbit calculated.
The wealth of comet information has value beyond mere classification. "This is allowing us to see how comets die," says Battams. When a comet constantly circles the Sun, it loses a little more ice each time, until it eventually falls to pieces, leaving a long trail of fragments. Thanks to SOHO, astronomers now have a plethora of images showing this process. "It's a unique data set and could not have been achieved in any other way," says Battams.
All this is on top of the extraordinary revelations that SOHO has provided over the 13 years it has been in space, observing the Sun and the near-Sun environment. "Catching the enormous total of comets has been an unplanned bonus," says Bernhard Fleck, ESA SOHO Project Scientist.
European Space Agency
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 Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface, we can see regions close to the Sun clearly only during an eclipse.
Roughly 85% of SOHO discoveries 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 km of the Sun's surface when they return from deep space.
At this proximity, which is a near miss in celestial terms, most of the fragments are finally destroyed, evaporated by the Sun's fearsome radiation - within sight of SOHO's electronic eyes. The images are captured by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO), one of 12 instruments on board.
Of course, LASCO itself does not make the detections; that task falls to an open group of highly-skilled volunteers who scan the data as soon as it is downloaded to Earth. Once SOHO transmits to Earth, the data can be on the Internet and ready for analysis within 15 minutes.
Enthusiasts from all over the world look at each individual image for a tiny moving speck that could be a comet. When someone believes they have found one, they submit their results to Karl Battams at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, who checks all of SOHO's findings before submitting them to the Minor Planet Center, where the comet is catalogued and its orbit calculated.
The wealth of comet information has value beyond mere classification. "This is allowing us to see how comets die," says Battams. When a comet constantly circles the Sun, it loses a little more ice each time, until it eventually falls to pieces, leaving a long trail of fragments. Thanks to SOHO, astronomers now have a plethora of images showing this process. "It's a unique data set and could not have been achieved in any other way," says Battams.
All this is on top of the extraordinary revelations that SOHO has provided over the 13 years it has been in space, observing the Sun and the near-Sun environment. "Catching the enormous total of comets has been an unplanned bonus," says Bernhard Fleck, ESA SOHO Project Scientist.
European Space Agency
Soho Current Events and Soho News RSSSolar flares set the Sun quaking
Data from the ESA/NASA spacecraft SOHO shows clearly that powerful starquakes ripple around the Sun in the wake of mighty solar flares that explode above its surface. The observations give solar physicists new insight into a long-running solar mystery and may even provide a way of studying other stars.
Cluster and Double Star uncover more on bright aurorae
Cluster data has helped provide scientists with a new view of magnetospheric processes, challenging existing theories about magnetic substorms that cause aurorae and perturbations in GPS signals.
Dartmouth's alternative breast imaging techniques sort abnormal from normal tissue
Dartmouth physicians and engineers have published a paper with results from a five-year project testing three new imaging techniques to examine breast abnormalities, including cancer.
Magnetic field uses sound waves to ignite sun's ring of fire
Sound waves escaping the sun's interior create fountains of hot gas that shape and power a thin region of the sun's atmosphere which appears as a ruby red "ring of fire" around the moon during a total solar eclipse, according to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.
Screaming CMEs Warn of Radiation Storms
A CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) is a solar body slam to our high-tech civilization. CMEs begin when the sun launches a billion tons of electrically conducting gas (plasma) into space at millions of miles per hour.
Has SOHO ended a 30-year quest for solar ripples?
The ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) may have glimpsed long-sought oscillations on the Sun's surface. The data will reveal details about the very core of our central star and it contains clues as to how the Sun formed, 4.6 billion years ago.
COROT space mission ready to search out new planets and map the interior of stars
The COROT mission is scheduled for launch on the 27th December 2006, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
Solar-B - a new solar mission to study the dynamic Sun
A new Japanese-led solar mission with ESA participation is preparing for launch on 23 September 2006. Solar-B will study the mechanisms which power the solar atmosphere and look for the causes of violent solar eruptions.
Williams College faculty/student team travel to study solar eclipse
A team of Williams College faculty and students is preparing to scientifically observe the total eclipse of the Sun that will sweep across the far side of Earth on March 29.
New technique provides the first full view of the far side of the sun
The hidden face of the sun is fully visible for the first time, thanks to a new technique developed at Stanford University.
More Soho Current Events and Soho News Articles
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