A recently get a line comet was spotted alongside the jam - out Sun during the December 14 total solar eclipse . The eclipse was visible in total in Chile and Argentina , and those who were lucky enough to see them might have been able to capture the little speck on their television camera , as seen on theNASA web site .
The comet was discovered on December 13 by theSolar and Heliospheric Observatory , or SOHO , a joint missionary work of NASA and the European Space Agency . It was descry thanks tocitizen scientistWorachate Boonplod from Thailand who contributes to the Sungrazer Project , where member of the public expression at SOHO image for evidence of these Sun - range comets .
The physical object in head was called C/2020 X3 ( SOHO ) . During the time of the eclipse , it was moving at 725,000 kilometre ( 450,000 statute mile ) per hour , just about 4.3 million kilometre ( 2.7 million miles ) from the surface of the Sun . The comet was about 15 meters ( 50 feet ) in diam , a truly midget cosmic objective . Unfortunately , its near trip near the Sun was black . The acute heat of our star destruct it a few hours after the occultation .
C/2020 X3 ( SOHO ) was the 4,108thcomet break in SOHO picture , and the 3,524thpart of the Kreutz syndicate of comets . These were all part of a much large physical object that was broken apart by the Sun thousands of years ago . It is believed that this progenitor was the Great Comet of 371 BCE , as witness by Aristotle among many others . The peradventure 120 - kilometer ( 75 - mile ) diameter object separate apart subsequently , with some of its bigger fragments producing bright visible comets such as the Great Comet of 1106 , the Great Comet of 1843 , the Great Comet of 1882 , and more recently comet Ikeya - Seki .
stargazer think that this group of comets could remain their perilous journey near to the Sun for many thousands of old age . At that point , gravitational perturbation might have open them in such a way that they no longer appear to have grow from the same parent eubstance . It is also possible that – like in the showcase of C/2020 X3 ( SOHO ) – most of these comets would be nothing but cosmic rubble by the time the syndicate is gravitationally dispersed .
Kreutz comet have a history of connection to occultation . In 1882 , one of these objects was seen streaking past the eclipsed Sun . photograph at the time showed how quickly it moved over the 110 second , suggest a f number of 500 kilometers ( 300 miles ) per second .
