Brightest Comet in 40 Years

Comet McNaught is a very bright comet, the brightest seen in 40 years. It also holds the distinction of being the brightest comet the SOHO spacecraft has ever seen. Launched in 1995, the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been providing unprecedented images of the solar disk in soft x-rays and ultra-violet wavelengths. It also houses three coronagraphs that provide images of the solar corona by blocking out the disk of the Sun and taking longer exposure images of the tenuous gas that surrounds it. These are called the LASCO C1, C2, and C3 coronagraphs and are differentiated by their field of view.

LASCO C1 is no longer operational but provided the views of the corona closest to the solar limb. C2 views the corona out to about 3 solar radii, and the C3 goes out to over 30 solar radii.

It is the C3 coronagraph that provides us with todays astronomy porn. Here is a movie of Comet McNaught traversing the LASCO C3 field of view:

I would also like to point out that beginning at about 12:54 UT, there is a coronal mass ejection (CME) which shoots out of the right side of the solar disk. CME’s are huge outflows of mass from the Sun, most containing around 10^13 grams of mass.

Movie Credit: NASA/ESA

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