“Halloween” comet burned up while flying towards the Sun: video of the last moments appeared
Kyiv • UNN
Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), discovered in September in Hawaii, evaporated near the Sun on October 28. The SOHO spacecraft captured the last moments of the comet, which belongs to the Kreutz family.
A video of the "Halloween comet" ATLAS burning up as it flies toward the Sun has been released, UNN reports citing Space.com.
Details
On Monday, October 28, the comet evaporated as it headed toward perihelion, the point closest to the sun in its orbit. Earlier, there were hopes that the comet, officially designated C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), might become a so-called "Halloween treat" visible to the naked eye, but in the end, these were just dreams.
Now, thanks to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a spacecraft jointly operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, we know exactly how and when comet ATLAS died.
Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) passed its closest point to Earth on October 23, reaching a magnitude of 8.7, too dim to be seen with the naked eye.
Addendum
Comet ATLAS was first discovered just last month, on September 27, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project in Hawaii. The comet belongs to a family of comets known as the Kreutz comets, which all follow a similar orbit that brings them very close to the Sun every 500-800 years, depending on the individual orbit of each comet.
The Kreutz comets are believed to be fragments of a single comet that broke apart at some point in the past. According to the European Space Agency, the earliest these comets were probably spotted was in 317 BC.
