APOD 2.8 New Year Sungrazer

The SOHO satellite. which stands for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, is a NASA satellite that orbits the sun and its main goal is to make observations of the sun. SOHO comes equipped with a smooth occulting disk that is much bigger than the sun itself is used to block out the intense sunlight that comes from the body of the sun and the outer regions of the star. At the edge of the disk is a sungrazer comet. A sungrazer comet is a comet that orbits extremely close to the sun. Sungrazers often orbit too close to the sun, where strong evaporation and tidal forces lead to the fragmentation of the comet. This recent sungrazer comet was discovered by Alan Watson when he was viewing images taken by another spacecraft, STEREO-A, and is one of the brightest observed so far by SOHO. This particular sungrazer did not survive its journey around the sun. Sungrazers are believed to be members of the Kreutz family of comets, which were formed from the successive breakups of a single comet that passed close to the sun during the twentieth century.