Family Life

01.05.10 | FL News Team

A comet has paid the price for flying too close to the sun. NASA's Solar and Helioscopic Observatory, or SOHO, has captured images ot the comet as it makes its plunge into the sun and gets "eaten." The footage has generated a lot of attention on YouTube and astronomical websites. Such comets are called Kreutz Sungrazers and are believed to be fragments of a massive comet that shattered centuries ago. They're named after German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first noted that they were related. A SOHO spokeswoman says the space agency shot the footage using a Coronagraph. The instrument blocks the brightest object in an image and allows display of such occurrances to be seen by the naked eye. People who watch the skies should be dazzled in the future. Experts say a new cluster of Kreutz comets will approach the sun over the next few decades.