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"Basic text", "title": "For More Information", "caption": "", "description": "See [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/sungrazing-comets.html](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/sungrazing-comets.html)", "items": [], "extra_data": {} } ], "studio": "SVS", "funding_sources": [ "NASA Heliophysics" ], "credits": [ { "role": "Animator", "people": [ { "name": "Tom Bridgman", "employer": "Global Science and Technology, Inc." } ] }, { "role": "Producer", "people": [ { "name": "Genna Duberstein", "employer": "USRA" } ] }, { "role": "Scientist", "people": [ { "name": "William D. Pesnell", "employer": "NASA/GSFC" } ] }, { "role": "Writer", "people": [ { "name": "Karen Fox", "employer": "ADNET Systems, Inc." } ] } ], "missions": [], "series": [], "tapes": [], "papers": [], "datasets": [], "nasa_science_categories": [ "Planets & Moons" ], "keywords": [ "Comet" ], "recommended_pages": [], "related": [ { "id": 11384, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11384/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "How to Cook a Comet", "description": "A comet's journey through the solar syste is perilous and violent. Before it reaches Mars - at some 230 million miles away from the sun - the radiation of the sun begins to cook off the frozen water ice directly into gas. This is called sublimation. It is the first step toward breaking the comet apart. If it survives this, the intense radiation and pressure closer to the sun could destroy it altogether.Animators at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created this short movie showing how the sun can cook a comet. Such a journey is currently being made by Comet ISON. It began its trip from the Oort cloud region of our solar system and is now traveling toward the sun. The comet will reach its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day — Nov. 28, 2013 — skimming just 730,000 miles above the sun’s surface. If it comes around the sun without breaking up, the comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye, and from what we see now, ISON is predicted to be a particularly bright and beautiful comet. Even if the comet does not survive, tracking its journey will help scientists understand what the comet is made of, how it reacts to its environment, and what this explains about the origins of the solar system. Closer to the sun, watching how the comet and its tail interact with the vast solar atmosphere can teach scientists more about the sun itself. || ", "release_date": "2013-11-21T14:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:26.102592-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 461733, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011384/cometcooking320.jpg", "filename": "cometcooking320.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Watch this video on the Goddard YouTube channel.", "width": 320, "height": 180, "pixels": 57600 } }, { "id": 11307, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11307/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "What is a Sungrazing Comet?", "description": "Sungrazing comets are a special class of comets that come very close to the sun at their nearest approach, a point called perihelion. To be considered a sungrazer, a comet needs to get within about 850,000 miles from the sun at perihelion. Many come even closer, even to within a few thousand miles. Being so close to the sun is very hard on comets for many reasons. They are subjected to a lot of solar radiation which boils off their water or other volatiles. The physical push of the radiation and the solar wind also helps form the tails. And as they get closer to the sun, the comets experience extremely strong tidal forces, or gravitational stress. In this hostile environment, many sungrazers do not survive their trip around the sun. Although they don't actually crash into the solar surface, the sun is able to destroy them anyway. Many sungrazing comets follow a similar orbit, called the Kreutz Path, and collectively belong to a population called the Kreutz Group. In fact, close to 85% of the sungrazers seen by the SOHO satellite are on this orbital highway. Scientists think one extremely large sungrazing comet broke up hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago, and the current comets on the Kreutz Path are the leftover fragments of it. As clumps of remnants make their way back around the sun, we experience a sharp increase in sungrazing comets, which appears to be going on now. Comet Lovejoy, which reached perihelion on December 15, 2011 is the best known recent Kreutz-group sungrazer. And so far, it is the only one that NASA's solar-observing fleet has seen survive its trip around the sun. Comet ISON, an upcoming sungrazer with a perihelion of 730,000 miles on November 28, 2013, is not on the Kreutz Path. In fact, ISON's orbit suggests that it may gain enough momentum to escape the solar system entirely, and never return. Before it does so, it will pass within about 40 million miles from Earth on December 26th. Assuming it survives its trip around the sun. || ", "release_date": "2013-07-16T13:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:00.158074-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 463840, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011307/Sungrazer_Still.png", "filename": "Sungrazer_Still.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Short, narrated video about sungrazing comets.Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } }, { "id": 11156, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11156/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Sungrazers Galore", "description": "Before 1979, there were less than a dozen known sungrazing comets. As of December 2012, we know of 2,500. Why did this number increase? With solar observatories like SOHO, STEREO, and SDO, we have not only better means of viewing the sun, but also the comets that approach it. SOHO allows us to see smaller, fainter comets closer to the sun than we have ever been able to see before. Even though many of these comets do not survive their journey past the sun, they survive long enough to be observed, and be added to our record of sungrazing comets. || ", "release_date": "2013-02-06T10:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:25.477182-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 469957, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011156/Counting_Comets_Still.png", "filename": "Counting_Comets_Still.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Why are we seeing so many sungrazing comets?", "width": 1264, "height": 709, "pixels": 896176 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }