Sungrazing Comets:
A tiny “sungrazer” comet was discovered during the recent total solar eclipse.
- Sungrazing Comets are a special class of comets that come very close to the sun at their nearest approach, a point called perihelion.
- To be considered a sungrazer, a comet needs to get within about 850,000 miles from the sun at perihelion. Many come even closer, even to within a few thousand miles.
- Being so close to the sun is very hard on comets for many reasons.
- They are subjected to a lot of solar radiation, which boils off their water or other volatiles.
- The physical push of the radiation and the solar wind also helps form the tails.
- As they get closer to the sun, the comets experience extremely strong tidal forces or gravitational stress.
- In this hostile environment, many sungrazers do not survive their trip around the sun.
- Most usually evaporate in the hot solar atmosphere.
- Most of the sungrazing comets observed follow a similar orbit, called the Kreutz Path, a single orbit that takes 800 years to complete.
- They collectively belong to a population called the Kreutz Group.
- These Kreutz comets are fragments of a single large comet that was shattered thousands of years ago.
- The far end of the Kreutz path lies 160 times farther from the sun than the orbit of Earth.
