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Post Info TOPIC: Kreutz sungrazer


L

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RE: Kreutz sungrazer
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Sun plunging comets sink or skim


Credit AstroNow09

Professor John Brown, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, explains how comets that get too close to the Sun are helping scientists learn more about these dirty snowballs and about the Sun itself.



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L

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A Sungrazing comet, a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family, has plunged towards the sun and disintegrated.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) managed to capture the comets as it passed through its field of view.

comet070607
Expand (2.01mb, gif movie)
Credit NASA/SOHO

Kreutz sungrazers are named after a 19th century German astronomer, Heinrich Kreutz, who first demonstrated that they were related..
Kreutz sungrazers are thought to be fragments from a giant comet that broke up at least 2000 years ago.
The last Kreutz Sungrazer to become bright was Comet White-Ortiz-Bolelli in 1970. It is not possible to estimate the chances of another very bright Kreutz comet arriving in the near future, but given that at least 10 have reached naked eye visibility over the last 200 years, another great comet from the Kreutz family seems almost certain to arrive at some point.

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