Sungrazing comets - from the SOHO archive
Date: 12 November 2009
Copyright: ESA
On 2 June 1998 telescopes on board the SOHO spacecraft viewed two sungrazing comets following similar, but not identical orbits, and entering the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun - the solar corona - never to reappear on the other side of the Sun.
Shortly after the comets disappeared behind the occulting disk of the LASCO C2 coronagraph, a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) with an enormous erupting prominence appeared on the southwest (lower right) limb of the Sun. (East and West are reversed in heliographic coordinates to match the compass directions for an Earth-bound observer.)
Last Update: 1 September 2019