'Halloween comet' breaks apart after nearing sun
Watch: Stunning 'Comet of the Century' dazzles as it soars past Earth
Astronomers report that Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS reached its closest point to the Sun on Sept. 27, putting on a spectacular display. The comet will make its way back near Earth, offering another chance to witness this celestial event around Oct. 12.
A NASA and European spacecraft watched as a newly discovered comet dubbed the "Halloween comet" met its demise after its close approach to the Sun.
According to NASA, the SOHO spacecraft captured the video below of comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS darting toward the Sun. It reached its closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion, on Monday at 7:30 a.m. ET.
Not to be confused with Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas, which has wowed skygazers throughout October, C/2024 S1 was only recently discovered by an observatory in Hawaii on Sept. 27.
However, we hardly knew this comet before it was gone. As it approached the Sun, the comet began breaking up into pieces, according to NASA.
"This comet was likely already a rubble pile by the time it entered SOHO’s field of view," said U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Karl Battams, the lead for NASA’s Sungrazer Project.
The Sungrazer Project is a NASA-funded program, based at the the Solar Physics Department of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, studying comets that get extremely close to the Sun, helping better our understanding of comet orbits, composition and evolution. Citizen scientists can contribute to the project and have helped find more than 5,000 comets since the project was founded in 1995, according to NASA.
Scientists called this comet a true "sungrazer" because it passed within 1% of Earth's distance to the Sun.
Comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS "has been completely vaporized as a result," NASA said.