A newly discovered comet met its demise during a dangerously close encounter with the Sun, breaking apart into chunks and destroying any hope of being spotted for Halloween.
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 affectionately nicknamed Halloween Comet’s last moments were captured by SOHO as it raced towards the star and violently disintegrated into smaller fragments.
Wheeeeee! ☄️
ESA/NASA’s Sun-watching SOHO spacecraft spied comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS (entering from bottom right) as it darted toward the Sun.
The comet reached its perihelion, or closest approach of the Sun, today at 7:30am ET. pic.twitter.com/T7kvthWOPe
— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) October 28, 2024
“This comet was likely already a rubble pile by the time it entered SOHO’s field of view,” Karl Battams, principal investigator for the LASCO instrument suite on SOHO and lead for NASA’s Sungrazer Project, is quoted as saying on X.
It’s disappointing news for sky watchers who had hoped to see the comet streak across the skies this week, just in time for the spooky holiday. However, the comet’s gruesome death does live 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 gained notoriety for its potential to put on a spectacular show in the night skies. Astronomers believed that the comet would be visible to the unaided 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 as close as 1% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. Unfortunately, the comet did not survive its encounter with the star, failing to show off its bright tail to us Earthlings. In fact, it was already doomed before it got there. “Over the past few days, it has broken into chunks as it approached the Sun,” NASA wrote on X.
On the other hand, Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinan-Atlas), a comet originating from the Oort Cloud that was discovered by China’s Tsuchinshan Observatory in January 2023, survived its own perihelion on September 27, and was visible in the skies to the unaided 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 Kreutz sungrazers, named for their characteristic close approach to the Sun at perihelion. Astronomer Heinrich Kreutz was the first to notice that the group of comets share similar orbits, coming within a very close distance to the Sun. The Kreutz sungrazers likely all came from a big comet that broke apart years ago, and they all tend to be on the smaller side. That’s why during their close approach to the Sun, the sungrazers either completely disintegrate or crash into the star. Some lucky comets, however, do survive the close encounter.
Most famously, Comet Lovejoy, discovered in 2011, survived its perihelion and emitted a unique blue and green glow that lit up the night skies. Unfortunately, that didn’t last for very long as the comet’s nucleus disintegrated just a few days after its encounter with the Sun. In 1965, comet Ikeya-Seki was discovered by two amateur astronomers from Japan. The comet also survived its rendezvous with the Sun, and reached a brightness magnitude of -11, or nearly as bright as a half-Moon, and became visible to the unaided eye.
If it had survived its close approach to the Sun, the Halloween Comet would have reached a brightness magnitude of -7. That’s brighter than Venus, the brightest planet in the solar system, which has a magnitude of -4.6. We missed out on a good show, but the comet will still go down in history as a spooky legend.
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