Astroblog: A Sundiving Keutz Sungrazer Evaporates (and doesn't cause a Coronal Mass Ejection)

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

A Sundiving Keutz Sungrazer Evaporates (and doesn't cause a Coronal Mass Ejection)


Sungrazing comet in SOHO LASCO C2 imagery from 21:38 UT 19 August to 02:24 20 August. I have stacked and overlaid the individual images in ImageJ to show the path of the comet (the bright dot coming in from the right hand side that fades and smears out). The bands are the coronal mass ejection. Click to embiggen.	Animation of the same images of the comet. Yopu can see the comet burn away as it approaches the occulting disk (the white circle shows where the surface of the Sun is). If you look carefully you can see the remnants of the tail being blown away in the last few images. (click to embiggen also)

The Sundiving Kreutz comet I wrote about yesterday entered the SOHO LASCO C3 camera field today, and disintegrated. In the C2 imagry you can see the bright comet eneter the camera view then fade away as it approaches the SUn and evaporates, you can even see the remamants of the tail being blown back by the solar wind.

Some claims have circulated saying that the comet hit the Sun and caused to coronal mass ejection you see. This caim is nased on the C3 images, where it is a bit hard to see the comet as it approaches the occulting disk when the CME blows. In the C3 images it is clear the CME blasts out when the comet is more than two solar diameters from the Sun (also, the CME blasted out from the far side of the Sun, away from the approaching comet).

Labels: comet, Soho, sun grazer

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:33 pm

Comments:

Can you find some information about an object in SOHO LASCO C3 on August 20, 19:30 to the bottom left of the sun. Venus has light coming from the sides as expected, but this object has the same light emitted but only for 2 frames and it is gone. If distance is relative to that of Venus, wouldn't that mean that this object is in our solar system?

# posted by