A newly discovered comet met its demise during a dangerous encounter with the Sun, breaking into pieces and destroying any hope of a Halloween sighting.
NASA and the European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spotted Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) as it made its closest approach to the Sun on Monday. The final moments of the affectionately nicknamed Halloween Comet were captured by SOHO as it raced towards the star and violently disintegrated into tiny pieces.
Wheeeeee! ☄️
ESA/NASA’s SOHO solar observatory probes comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS (inset from bottom right) as it races toward the sun.
The comet reached its perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, today at 7:30am ET. pic.twitter.com/T7kvthWOPe
-NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) October 28, 2024
“This comet was probably already a pile of debris when it entered the SOHO observatory,” Karl Battams, principal investigator of the LASCO instrument suite on SOHO and lead of NASA’s Sungrazer Project, was quoted as saying in X.
It’s disappointing news for sky watchers who were hoping to catch a glimpse of the comet in the sky this week, just in time for the spooky holiday. However, the comet’s gruesome death lives up to its nickname.
The Hawaii-based ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey first spotted the comet on September 27, and it quickly became famous for its ability to create a spectacular display in the night sky. Astronomers believed the comet would be visible to the naked eye as it approaches perihelion, or its closest distance to the Sun, at 7:30 a.m. ET on October 28.
During its closest approach to the Sun, Comet C/2024 S1 came within 1% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately, the comet did not survive its encounter with the star, failing to show its bright tail to us on Earth. In fact, it was already abandoned before it got there. “A few days ago, it broke into pieces as it approached the Sun,” NASA wrote in X.
On the other hand, Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinan-Atlas), a comet from the Oort Cloud that was discovered by China’s Tsuchinshan Observatory in January 2023, survived its orbit on September 27, and was visible in the sky until the end. one eye. This comet, however, only came about a third of the distance between Earth and the Sun, according to NASA.
Comet C/2024 S1 belongs to a group of comets known as the Kreutz sungrazers, named for their closest approach to the Sun at perihelion. Astronomer Heinrich Kreutz was the first to notice that a group of comets shared similar orbits, coming very close to the Sun. Kreutz sungrazers almost all come from comets that broke up years ago, and they all tend to be on the small side. That’s why during their closest approach to the Sun, sungrazers completely disintegrate or crash into the star. Some lucky comets, however, survive close encounters.
The most famous, Comet Lovejoy, which was discovered in 2011, survived its orbit and emitted a unique blue and green glow that lit up the night sky. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as the comet’s nucleus disintegrated a few days after its encounter with the Sun. In 1965, the comet Ikeya-Seki was discovered by two Japanese amateur astronomers. The comet also survived its encounter with the Sun, and reached a magnitude of -11, or about as bright as the Moon, and was visible to the naked eye.
Had it survived its closest approach to the Sun, the Halloween Comet would have reached magnitude -7. That’s much brighter than Venus, the brightest planet in the solar system, at magnitude -4.6. We missed a great show, but the comet will still go down in history as a spooky legend.
