The comet known as C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), also dubbed the “Halloween comet,” disintegrated on October 28 as it approached the sun. The comet’s final moments were captured by the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission.
C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) was discovered on September 27 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project in Hawaii. The comet passed its closest point to Earth on October 23 and had been named the “Halloween comet” due to the possibility that it would be visible in the night sky near the end of October.
However, as the comet approached its perihelion—the closest point in its orbit to the Sun—at around 7:30 a.m. ET on Monday, it was completely vaporized by the sun’s intense heat and radiation. As the comet disintegrated, it passed within 1% of the Earth’s distance from the sun, less than 1 million miles from the star, making it a sungrazing comet.
Sungrazing comets are those that pass within about 850,000 miles of the sun. Many of them follow a similar orbit, called the Kreutz Path, according to NASA. Astronomers believe that these Kreutz Path comets are all the remains of a much larger comet that disintegrated sometime in the past. The comet Lovejoy, which reached its perihelion in December 2011, remains the only Kreutz Path comet to have survived its brush with the sun.
The “Halloween comet” was a member of the Kreutz family of comets, a population of mostly tiny comet fragments originating from a single-parent object that fell apart near the sun, presumably thousands of years ago. Despite the comet’s disintegration, its journey provided valuable data for astronomers studying the behavior of comets as they approach the sun.
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