The
1996 Christmas Comet (SOHO 6)
December 23, 1996
When antimatter sungrazer comets collided with the sun, they are known as Kamikaze comets. The SOHO 6 sungrazer comet, collided with the sun on December 23, 1996, and produce enormous explosions and solar flares as shown in the pictures below.
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Credit: LASCO, SOHO Consortium, NRL, ESA, NASA |
- NASAAstronomy Picture of the Day http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000520.html
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ESA Hot Shots from SOHO Sungrazing Comets Discovered by SOHO http://sohowww.estec.esa.nl/hotshots/2000_02_07/, http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/top10/top10_detail_XMAScometA.html
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ESA Science and Technology, The Sun as you never saw it before, November 19, 1997 http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/Pr_6_1997_i_EN.html
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ESA Science and Technology, The 1996 Christmas comet, March 30, 2003, http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=12365
Articles
- The Planetary Society, Comet plunging into the Sun's corona, Spetember/October 2000 http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/headlines/2000/TPR9=102000.htm
- Spaceflight Now, Astronomers using SOHO to find Sungrazing Comets, July 16, 2000, http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0007/16sohocomets/
The kamikaze comets are some of the documented comets. For more information, please visit American Geophysical Union, Naval Research Laboratory, Science Programs European Space Agency (ESA), Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), NASA, University of Cambridge, and Sebastian's Comet Hunt.