Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The SOHO spacecraft is currently generating spectacular images with its LASCO C3 camera of a recently found comet called NEAT which appears to have been struck by a massive solar eruption during its closest approach to the Sun. The chance encounter could lead to new discoveries about the interactions of comets with hot, charged particles billowing from the Sun. NEAT is putting on what may turn out to be the most remarkable comet show ever witnessed by SOHO, which has photographed more than 500 comets rounding the Sun. “It is far the brightest and largest comet seen,” said Paal Brekke, SOHO deputy project scientist.
A solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), appears to have hit the comet Monday, he noted; scientists think they then observed a kink propagating down the comet’s ion tail. “Certainly such effects from a CME could give us new information about comets, their tails and how they interact with the solar wind,” said Brekke. NEAT was just one-tenth of Earth’s distance from the Sun when it made its closest approach to the Sun this week; it’s on its way back out into the fringes of the solar system where it requires about 37,000 years to make a single, elongated orbit.