' Kamikaze Komet ' triggers a massive magnetic explosion on the Sun
5/23/2008
On May 23rd, a comet plunged toward the sun, overheated, and disintegrated. A coronagraph onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory saw the whole thing:
The kamikaze comet was a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after a 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet at least 2000 years ago. Several of these fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see, but occasionally a big one catches our attention.
Note: In the movie, the passage of the comet seems to trigger a coronal mass ejection: diagram. This is almost certainly a coincidence. The comet was at least a million kilometers above the surface of the sun at the time and there is no known mechanism for a comet to trigger a magnetic explosion across such a gulf.
