Astronomers have discovered a giant comet heading directly towards the sun. The 6 km wide ice ball, called 96P Machholz 1, is thought to have come from somewhere outside our solar system.
The comet is being monitored by the Sun and its Atmosphere Observatory (SOHO), a space probe of the European Space Agency (ESA), as it shoots towards our star within the orbit of Mercury, leaving an icy trail behind.
Comet tails consist mainly of gas, which splashes behind blocks of ice and frozen gas as they are heated by the sun’s rays.
In 2008, an analysis of material dumped by 150 comets found that 96P Machholz 1 contained less than 1.5% of expected levels of the chemical cyanogen, and was also low in carbon, leading astronomers to conclude that it could be an intruder from the system. another solar.
Now, its dash towards the sun may reveal more of its secrets.
“Comet 96P Machholz 1 (or 96P for short) is very atypical in composition and behavior, so we never know exactly what we might see,” Carl Battams, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., told spaceweather.com. Hopefully we can take some nice science out of this and share it with everyone as soon as we can.”
The comet was discovered by Donald Machholz, who gave it its name (Machholz), for the first time in 1986.
