NASA’s SOHO observatory just spotted its 4,000th comet

[Mike Wehner]

• The SOHO mission between NASA and the European Space Agency has detected its 4,000th individual comet.
• The comet, called SOHO-4000, is tiny and hard to see from space, as well as being totally invisible from telescopes on the ground.
• The SOHO observatory has spotted nearly all of its comets using a special instrument that detects the speeding blocks of ice and rock as they near the Sun.

We tend to only hear about near-Earth objects when they pose a potential threat to our planet. That makes sense since there are so many rocks and chunks of ice floating around our celestial neighborhood that it would be silly for scientists to make a big deal out of each and every one of them. However, a new comet nicknamed SOHO-4000 is pretty special, and not because it's going to hit Earth. It's unique because it's the 4,000th comet detected by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission from NASA and the European Space Agency.

SOHO-4000, which is still waiting to be confirmed by scientists at the Minor Planet Center, is a member of a comet family called Kreutz. Kreutz comets travel in a similar path, getting up-close-and-personal with the Sun before swinging back out again.

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NASA’s SOHO observatory just spotted its 4,000th comet originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 19:36:38 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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