Sungrazing Comet Turns to Cosmic Mud in Dramatic Halloween No-Present

A newly found comet met its demise throughout a dangerously shut encounter with the Solar, breaking up into chunks and destroying any hope of being noticed for Halloween.

NASA and the European Area Company’s Photo voltaic and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) noticed Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) because it made its closest strategy to the Solar on Monday. The affectionately nicknamed Halloween Comet’s final moments had been captured by SOHO because it raced in direction of the star and violently disintegrated into smaller fragments.

Wheeeeee! ☄️

ESA/NASA’s Solar-watching SOHO spacecraft spied comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS (coming into from backside proper) because it darted towards the Solar.

The comet reached its perihelion, or closest strategy of the Solar, in the present day at 7:30am ET. pic.twitter.com/T7kvthWOPe

— NASA Solar & Area (@NASASun) October 28, 2024

“This comet was seemingly already a rubble pile by the point it entered SOHO’s subject of view,” Karl Battams, principal investigator for the LASCO instrument suite on SOHO and lead for NASA’s Sungrazer Mission, is quoted as saying on X.

It’s disappointing information for sky watchers who had hoped to see the comet streak throughout the skies this week, simply in time for the spooky vacation. Nevertheless, the comet’s ugly demise does dwell as much as its nickname.

The Hawaii-based ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Final Alert System) survey first noticed the comet on September 27, and it rapidly gained notoriety for its potential to put on a spectacular show in the night skies. Astronomers believed that the comet can be seen to the unaided eye because it approaches perihelion, or its closest distance to the Solar, at 7:30 a.m. ET on October 28.

Throughout its closest strategy to the Solar, Comet C/2024 S1 got here as shut as 1% of the space between Earth and the Solar. Sadly, the comet didn’t survive its encounter with the star, failing to point out off its shiny tail to us Earthlings. In truth, it was already doomed earlier than it bought there. “Over the previous few days, it has damaged into chunks because it approached the Solar,” NASA wrote on X.

Alternatively, Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinan-Atlas), a comet originating from the Oort Cloud that was found by China’s Tsuchinshan Observatory in January 2023, survived its personal perihelion on September 27, and was seen within the skies to the unaided eye. This comet, nevertheless, solely got here a few third of the space between Earth and the Solar, in response to NASA.

Comet C/2024 S1 belongs to a bunch of comets often called Kreutz sungrazers, named for his or her attribute shut strategy to the Solar at perihelion. Astronomer Heinrich Kreutz was the primary to note that the group of comets share related orbits, coming inside a really shut distance to the Solar. The Kreutz sungrazers seemingly all got here from an enormous comet that broke aside years in the past, they usually all are usually on the smaller facet. That’s why throughout their shut strategy to the Solar, the sungrazers both fully disintegrate or crash into the star. Some fortunate comets, nevertheless, do survive the shut encounter.

Most famously, Comet Lovejoy, found in 2011, survived its perihelion and emitted a singular blue and inexperienced glow that lit up the evening skies. Sadly, that didn’t final for very lengthy because the comet’s nucleus disintegrated just some days after its encounter with the Solar. In 1965, comet Ikeya-Seki was found by two newbie astronomers from Japan. The comet additionally survived its rendezvous with the Solar, and reached a brightness magnitude of -11, or almost as shiny as a half-Moon, and have become seen to the unaided eye.

If it had survived its shut strategy to the Solar, the Halloween Comet would have reached a brightness magnitude of -7. That’s brighter than Venus, the brightest planet within the photo voltaic system, which has a magnitude of -4.6. We missed out on a great present, however the comet will nonetheless go down in historical past as a spooky legend.