3.5 times closer than Mercury: SOHO observatory shows comet rendezvous with the Sun

NASA has published an animation made up of images from the SOHO space observatory. It shows the moment of passage of the comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) perihelion of its orbit.

Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) was discovered in April 2024 by ATLAS telescopes. It came from the Oort cloud. Calculations show that the last time the ice guest visited the inner solar system was about 160,000 years ago  — in times when our planet was still inhabited by Neanderthals. 

On January 13, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) passed the perihelion of its orbit, flying at a distance of 13 million km from the Sun. This is 3.5 less than the distance between the Sun and Mercury. The visit turned out to be captured by the SOHO observatory. The LASCO instrument mounted on its board, which uses a disk to cover the Sun’s surface and study its corona, was able to capture the comet’s flyby.

The LASCO animation covers the period from January 11 to January 15, 2025. It clearly shows how the comet’s brightness rapidly increases as it approaches the Sun. The images were processed to reveal fine details in the tail of C/2024 G3 (ATLAS). When bright comets like this one come close to the Sun, their tails often respond to the fluctuations in the stream of particles and energy it emits, called the solar wind. Astronomers can study the reaction of tails to better understand how the Sun affects its neighborhood and comets passing by.

After its visit to the Sun, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) gained enough brightness to be seen in the sky. The best conditions for observations were in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, the nucleus of the comet still could not withstand the thermal stress of meeting the Sun and disintegrated a few days after passing perihelion. But it can still be seen in the southern sky.

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