Final Flight

On January 3, the European Space Agency’s SOHO solar observatory spacecraft captured images of a comet flying towards the Sun….and then disappearing into it, evaporating in heat of the solar furnace. The video above, taken by the spacecraft’s Heliospheric Imager which monitors the activity of the Sun’s corona, clearly shows the comet’s final moments before it vanishes behind the round screen that blocks out the blinding brightness of the Sun’s disc. (The white circle notes the actual size of the sun behind the disc.)

Read the SOHO site’s release here.

The bright object at the lower right of the video is Venus.

Credit: SOHO (ESA & NASA)