Nov. 19th’s 2010 Sundiving Comet Bites the Dust.
EVAPORATING COMET: A bright comet just discovered on Nov. 17th by Polish comet hunter Michal Kusiak is about to disappear forever. The problem is, it is diving toward the sun. Click Play it again and note how the head of the comet is shrinking and dimming. The icy visitor from the outer solar system is evaporating before our very eyes.
On Nov. 14th, another comet followed the same path and met the same fate. It’s no coincidence. Both are fragments of a giant parent comet that broke apart about 2000 years ago. Astronomers call them “Kruetz sungrazers” after the 19th century German researcher, Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in detail. According to some estimates, several Kruetz comets pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see, but occasionally a large fragment (or two) attracts attention. A large percentage of LASCO comets belong to one of four known groups (Kreutz=85%, Meyer=6%, Marsden=2%, and Kracht=2%). A group’s orbit is fixed in space with respect to the solar system but its location in LASCO images will oscillate annually due to SOHO’s orbit about the Sun.
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