A comet has been captured by NASA being 'eaten' as it flies too close to the sun. The space agency's solar-focused agency - Solar and Helioscopic Observatory (SOHO) - captured footage of the Kreutz Sungrazer as it made its fateful approach. The footage has proven popular on YouTube and scientific and astronomical websites and blogs. Read more
This sungrazer comet is probably a family member of the Kreutz orbital group of comets (Named after the German astronomer Carl Heinrich Friedrich Kreutz who studied them in detail) the Kreutz comets are fragments a giant comet which would have broken up nearly two thousand years ago at the time of a close passage to our Sun.
A sungrazing comet is a comet that passes extremely close to the Sun at perihelion - sometimes within a few thousand kilometres of the Sun's surface. While small sungrazers can be completely evaporated during such a close approach to the Sun, larger sungrazers can survive many perihelion passages. Read more