SOHO watches comet
News story originally written on January 31, 2003

SOHO's view of comet Kudo-Fujikawa. Click on image for full size (93K JPEG) Image courtesy NASA

On January 29, 2003 a comet passed very close to the Sun. The comet was too close to the Sun to be viewed from Earth; the bright light from the Sun blocked our view of the comet. However, the SOHO spacecraft, which observes the Sun continuously from an orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, was able to capture images of the comet's close pass by the Sun. SOHO has an instrument called a coronagraph, which blocks out the brightest light from the Sun, allowing it a good view of the comet's closest approach.

Comet Kudo-Fujikawa (also called C/2002 X5) passed within 28.4 million kilometers (17.7 million miles) of the Sun. That was well inside the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. Mercury orbits at a distance of about 58 million kilometers from the Sun.

Several images from SOHO were combined to create this animation (820K GIF) of the comet passing the Sun; and this high resolution animation (3.7M GIF). These are large files, and may take a long time to download!

Comet Kudo-Fujikawa as seen by SOHO. Click on image for full size (93K JPEG) Image courtesy NASA

On January 29, 2003 a comet passed very close to the Sun. The comet was too close to the Sun to be viewed from Earth; the bright light from the Sun blocked our view of the comet. However, a spacecraft named SOHO was able to take pictures of the comet. SOHO has an instrument called a coronagraph, which blocks out the brightest light from the Sun, allowing it a good view of the comet's closest approach.

Comet Kudo-Fujikawa passed within 28.4 million kilometers (17.7 million miles) of the Sun. That was well inside the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. Mercury orbits at a distance of about 58 million kilometers from the Sun.

Several images from SOHO were combined to create this animation (820K GIF) of the comet passing the Sun; and this high resolution animation (3.7M GIF). These are large files, and may take a long time to download!

Comet as seen by SOHO. Click on image for full size (93K JPEG) Image courtesy NASA

On January 29, 2003 a comet passed very close to the Sun. This picture was taken by a spacecraft called SOHO. When the SOHO spacecraft took this picture, we couldn’t see the comet from Earth because the comet was too close to the Sun. SOHO has a special instrument called a coronagraph which blocks the brightest light from the Sun. A coronagraph is a lot like an eclipse in the way it blocks the Sun's light.

Comet Kudo-Fujikawa passed very close to the Sun. For a while it was closer than Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

Some pictures from SOHO were put together to make a movie (820K GIF) of the comet passing the Sun. Here is an even better movie (3.7M GIF). These movies are VERY BIG, and may take a long time to download to your computer!