A special comet recently passed amazingly close to the Sun.
The movement of the 6.4 kilometer diameter meteor, which was named 96P/Machholz 1, is being monitored by the European Space Agency, ESA in short, and the SOHO solar observation satellite.
Comet towards the Sun
– 96P is not a typical comet, its composition and behavior are different from the ones we have seen so far – said astrophysicist Karl Battams. – We hope that we will have the opportunity to study it and share the knowledge with others as soon as possible.
Comet 96P/Machholz 1 in a 2007 image.
David Machholz first noticed the huge comet in 1986 with his homemade telescope. Most meteors that approach the Sun are no more than 10 meters wide and burn up before they actually hit the celestial body.
But because of its massive size, Machholz 1 is more resistant to the heat produced by the Sun, and its material is unmatched. Unlike meteors known so far, this one is low in carbon and cyanogen. NASA’s space probe recorded its movements in the past few days.
It could come closest to the Sun on January 31, 2023, at which time it will be three times closer than Mercury, at a distance of 18,600,000 kilometers and traveling at a speed of 118 kilometers per second.
It was probably removed from its original solar system by the gravity of a giant planet. After that, it could certainly have been caught up in the gravitational field of Jupiter, which diverted it from its orbit, and it ended up being “trapped” around the Sun.
Scientists do not consider it out of the question that sooner or later it will be ejected from our solar system, in any case, according to calculations, it will approach the Earth in 2028, but even then at a distance of more than 47 million kilometers.
Basically, SOHO’s task is to monitor solar flares, because they can create geomagnetic storms that can even paralyze the Internet. Since its launch in 1995, it has detected more than three thousand comets near the Sun.
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(Source of the image within the article: NASA, HI-2 camera of the STEREO-A spacecraft / Wikimedia Commons Public domain, source of cover and promotional images: Getty Images Hungary.)
