STEREO - Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory
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Suicide Comet

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The STEREO spacecraft captured a very bright, sungrazing comet as it rocketed towards the Sun (Mar. 12, 2010) and was vaporized. This comet is arguably the brightest comet that STEREO has ever observed. The comet is believed to belong to the Kreutz family of comets that broke up from a much larger comet many hundreds of years ago. They are known to orbit close to the Sun. STEREO's COR2 coronagraph instrument blocks out the Sun with an occulting disk; the white circle represents the size of the Sun. The video clip covers about 36 hours of activity.


Last Revised: October 03, 2023 17:04:35 UTC
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