Early on 8 April 2024, a citizen-scientist found a comet in images from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). This comes after the recent discovery of SOHO’s 5000th comet. But this comet, named SOHO-5008, was special for a different reason.
Karl Battams (US Naval Resarch Lab), director of the SOHO Sungrazer Project, predicted that SOHO-5008 would be visible during the total solar eclipse that would plunge parts of the United States and Mexico into darkness on that day.
Petr Horálek, from the Physics Institute in Opava (Czechia), was in Mexico to witness the eclipse. The clouds opened up and Petr was able to take this beautiful picture of the Sun’s breathtaking corona. Comet SOHO-5008 can be seen to the lower-left of the Sun.
Soon after Petr captured the comet with his camera, it found its demise, coming so close to the Sun that it disintegrated.
Observations of these “sungrazing” comets from Earth are extremely rare, and this sighting was only made possible thanks to the total solar eclipse.
