NASA SOHO: Newfound Comet to Dive Through Sun

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured this shot of a huge coronal mass ejection on Oct. 1, 2011, shortly after a comet dove into the sun (inset, right).

CREDIT: SOHO/NASA/ESA

A newly discovered comet is racing toward a mid-December rendezvous with the sun — a rendezvous that it will likely not survive.

The comet is categorized by astronomers as a "sungrazer" and it is destined to do just that; literally graze the surface of the sun (called the photosphere) and pass through the sun's intensely hot corona, where temperatures have been measured at upwards of 3.6-million degrees Fahrenheit (2-million degrees Celsius).

While the comet will not collide with the sun, most astronomers say the odds are rather long that it will remain intact after its closest pass by the sun. The most exciting aspect of the event is that the comet's expected destruction should be visible on your computer monitor.

And there is a very slight chance that, should the comet somehow manage to survive, it might briefly become visible in broad daylight.

Discovery
The comet was discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy Nov. 27 using a C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, working with a QHY9 CCD camera.

At first, Lovejoy believed that the rapidly moving fuzzy image he saw was nothing more than a camera reflection. But two nights later, despite clouds and haze, he managed to find the fuzzy object again and take several new images.

Lovejoy then put out a call to some trusted observers to confirm his observations. He received that confirmation Dec. 1 from Mount John Observatory, based in the Mackenzie Basin on the South Island of New Zealand. By then, 31 separate observations of the comet had been collected to determine an orbit, and the first announcement of Lovejoy's discovery was made this past Friday (Dec. 2) by the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union.

Its official title is C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). It is Terry Lovejoy's third comet discovery.