3,000 Comets for SOHO

B-roll for SOHO live shot || Dr. Alex Young, NASA Scientist talks about the 20th Anniversary of SOHO mission. For complete transcript, click here. || For complete transcript, click here.Dr. Alex Young social media promo

A sun-observing spacecraft discovers its 3,000th comet. || Find out more about the SOHO mission and how the spacecraft finds comets in this video. || SOHO observes the space surrounding the sun by blocking out the bright light from its disk (white circle) and inner atmosphere (red circle). || Comets streaming toward the sun, like the one in the lower-right corner, often show up in images taken by the spacecraft. || Launched in 1995, SOHO has monitored the sun for nearly 20 years from a distance of about 930,000 miles from Earth.

LEAD: With a bit of serendipity that comes often comes from science research, a NASA satellite played a key role in discovering the 3,000th comet. 1. Before the launch in 1995 of the NASA and European Space Agency s main job is to study the sun, not comets. But citizen scientists and astronomers from around the world combing through SOHO data have greatly expanded our knowledge about comets. 4. An amateur astronomer in Thailand spotted number 3,000.TAG: Citizen scientists, including two 13-year-olds, have found 95 percent of SOHO comets.

This visualization presents a small sample of the 9 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective a an observer at a fixed point above the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center. || Stationed in a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun Lagrange point since 1996, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has monitored the Sun for nearly 20 years. The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument blocks out the bright solar disk, making it easier to see the corona of plasma and dust around the Sun, normally only visible during solar eclipses. This instrument also provides a very large field of view of the region around the Sun.In addition to the benefit of this capability in solar studies, SOHO/LASCO can see many comets which pass very close to the Sun, called on the solar system with the Sun at the center. || This visualization presents a small sample of the 9 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective a an observer at a fixed point in the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center.

This visualization presents 14 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective of an observer orbiting a fixed point above the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. || Stationed in a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun Lagrange point since 1996, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has monitored the Sun for nearly 20 years. The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument blocks out the bright solar disk, making it easier to see the corona of plasma and dust around the Sun, normally only visible during solar eclipses. This instrument also provides a very large field of view of the region around the Sun.In addition to the benefit of this capability in solar studies, SOHO/LASCO can see many comets which pass very close to the Sun, called on the solar system with the Sun at the center. || This visualization presents 14 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective of an observer at a fixed point above the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center. || This visualization presents 14 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective of an observer at a fixed point in the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center.

This visualization presents 14 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective of an observer at a fixed point above the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center. || Stationed in a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun Lagrange point since 1996, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has monitored the Sun for nearly 20 years. The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument blocks out the bright solar disk, making it easier to see the corona of plasma and dust around the Sun, normally only visible during solar eclipses. This instrument also provides a very large field of view of the region around the Sun.In addition to the benefit of this capability in solar studies, SOHO/LASCO can see many comets which pass very close to the Sun, called on the solar system with the Sun at the center. || This visualization presents 14 years of comets seen by SOHO from the perspective of an observer at a fixed point in the ecliptic plane with the Sun at the center.