In a rare celestial spectacle, two comets have been observed plunging into the Sun's atmosphere in close succession, on June 1 and 2. This unusual event on Earth's own star was followed on June 2 by a likely unrelated but also dramatic ejection of solar gas and magnetic fields on the southwest (or lower right) limb of the Sun.
The observations of the comets and the large erupting prominence were made by the LASCO coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Science instruments on SOHO have discovered more than 50 comets, including many so- called sun grazers, but none in such close succession. The eruption of solar gas was directed away from Earth and does not pose a hazard to our planet or orbiting astronauts.
Video footage of these intriguing events will be uplinked on the NASA TV Video File at 11 a.m. and 3:55 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 4.
Selected images and an image sequence of the new observations can be found on the World Wide Web at the NASA SOHO Website:
http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/comets/SOHO_sungrazers.html
SOHO is a joint undertaking of NASA and the European Space Agency. Development of the LASCO instrument was coordinated by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. Dr. Donald Michels of the LASCO science team led the team that observed this rare phenomenon.
NASA Television is carried on GE-2, transponder 9C, 85 degrees West longitude, vertical polarization, frequency 3880 MHz, audio 6.8 Megahertz.