A comet that was hoped to be visible to the naked eye over the coming days has been gobbled up by the sun.
The comet, named Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1), passed its closest point to Earth on October 24, and was due to light up the sky after swinging closely past the sun.
Unfortunately, the comet appears to have disintegrated as it reached its perihelion on October 28, melting into nothingness as it skimmed only 750,000 miles from the surface of our star.
ATLAS was hoped to be visible to the naked eye in the days after its encounter with the sun, possibly becoming even brighter than Venus by Halloween.
Sadly, coronagraphs on NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spotted the comet's final hurrah as it melted under the intense glare of the sun. Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1) was only spotted for the first time on September 27 this year, making its journey through the solar system a short but sweet one.
ATLAS (C/2024 S1) was a type of comet known as a Kreutz sungrazer, notable for passing extremely close to the sun. Named after the German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first studied them in the 19th century, these comets are thought to be fragments of a single large comet that broke apart several centuries ago.
"The Kreutz sungrazers are small cometary nuclei passing closely above the solar surface or diving into the Sun. Among the astronomers, it is generally believed that these nuclei are the fragments released from a common progenitor. Since the ejection speed from the progenitor was relatively small, their orbital ellipses are similar," Lubos Neslusan, an astronomer at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, told Newsweek.
Kreutz sungrazers follow orbits that bring them dangerously close to the sun, and due to the immense gravitational forces and temperatures near the sun, many of these comets disintegrate, vaporizing completely.
Larger Kreutz sungrazers can sometimes be bright enough to be visible from Earth with the naked eye, such as Kreutz Comet Ikeya-Seki—also known as the Great Comet of 1965—which hit a magnitude of −10. A full moon is only slightly brighter, at magnitude -13.
This is why ATLAS (C/2024 S1), which is thought to have been larger than most other Kreutz sungrazers, was hoped to shine spectacularly in the dawn skies if it survived its swing by the sun.
The comet was anticipated to be breaking up in the days before it approached the sun, as its magnitude appeared to be fluctuating significantly, which is a sign of its core disintegrating.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about comets? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
