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\u2019s 5000th comet. But this comet, named SOHO-5008, was special for a different reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petr Hor\u00e1lek, 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\u2019s breathtaking corona. Comet SOHO-5008 can be seen to the lower-left of the Sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon after Petr captured the comet with his camera, it found its demise, coming so close to the Sun that it disintegrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Observations of these \u201csungrazing\u201d comets from Earth are extremely rare, and this sighting was only made possible thanks to the total solar eclipse.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A principios del 8 de abril de 2024, un cient\u00edfico ciudadano encontr\u00f3 un cometa en im\u00e1genes del Observatorio Solar y Heliosf\u00e9rico (SOHO) de la ESA\/NASA. Sigue al reciente descubrimiento del cometa n\u00famero 5000 de SOHO. Pero este, llamado cometa SOHO-5008, fue especial por una raz\u00f3n diferente. Karl Battams (Laboratorio de Investigaci\u00f3n Naval de EE. UU.),<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[201,54,202],"class_list":{"0":"post-7950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sabias-que","8":"tag-no57","9":"tag-sabias-que","10":"tag-sabias-que-no57"},"yoast_head":"\n