Comet's Collision with the Sun Captured in 3-D

[n2doc]

NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft caught this image of a comet impacting the sun. The comet apparently survived the intense heat of the sun's outer atmosphere – called the corona – and disappeared in the chromosphere, which is a thin layer of plasma found between the visible surface of the sun and the corona. Credit: NASA


By Denise Chow
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 24 May 2010
05:56 pm ET
MIAMI – A comet plunging into the sun has been captured in 3-D as it hurtled along its kamikaze path for the first time, solar physicists announced Monday.

"We believe this is the first time a comet has been tracked in 3-D space this low down in the solar corona," said solar physicist Claire Raftery, a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley.

Four post-doctoral researchers at UC Berkeley's Space Science's Laboratory used instruments aboard NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft to track the so-called sun-grazing comet as it approached the sun. They were able to estimate an approximate time and place of impact.

NASA's STEREO mission, which launched in 2006, is actually made up of twin spacecraft that orbit the sun, one ahead of the Earth and one behind it, and provide stereo views of the sun.

more

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/comet-collision-with-sun-aas216-100524.html

[jberryhill]

1. "stereo views of the sun"

Didn't anyone ever tell them not to stare at the sun?