[meteorite-list] Comet Plunges into the Sun

[Ron Baalke]

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/061106_comet_sun.html

Comet Plunges into the Sun
By Robert Roy Britt 
space.com
06 November 2006

A comet made a death plunge into the Sun on Friday, 
disintegrating as its icy chemicals vaporized on the way in.

An animation
<http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=061106_sun_comet_02.gif&cap=A+comet+plunges+into+the+Sun+on+Nov.+3%2C+2006.+Credit%3A+SOHO>
showing the comet's plunge was made with images from the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO.

All comets orbit the Sun, and most do so on elongated paths 
that can pass through the inner solar system before winging 
out well beyond Pluto.  Solar radiation heats a comet and burns
off some of the ice and dust that it is made of, creating a 
cloud of material and sometimes a tail. The dust and gas 
scatter sunlight, making the comet bright.

Those comets that come very close to the Sun are called 
sungrazers.

A few get too close.

SOHO images have been used to discover more than 1,000 comets,
and the craft has identified many comets in their dramatic 
final hours before being swallowed by the Sun.

Other comets discovered without SOHO, such as one named 
Kudo-Fujikawa, have at times been watched in real time
by web surfers as they dramatically sliced across SOHO's 
field of view. In 2003, a comet named NEAT, whose path in 
front of the SOHO cameras was well predicted, was smacked 
by a solar storm, the first such event ever recorded.