SOHO SPACECRAFT SEES TWO COMETS PLUNGE INTO SUN In a rare celestial spectacle, two comets have been observed plunging into the Sun's atmosphere in close succession, on June 1 and 2. This unusual event on Earth's own star was followed on June 2 by a likely unrelated but also dramatic ejection of solar gas and magnetic fields on the southwest (or lower right) limb of the Sun (see ....). The observations of the comets and the large erupting prominence were made by the LASCO coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Science instruments on SOHO have discovered more than 50 comets, including many so-called sun grazers, but none in such close succession.

Downloads

• Full-size image [JPG, 240K]
• Medium-size image [JPG, 41K]
• Hi-resolution size image [TIF, 309K]