Ingestion of comets

1997/07/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

In December 1995, the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Obserbatory) probe was launched to study the Sun and the heliosphere. The probe has a corograph called Lasco and last December an unknown comet appeared without notice.

Astronomers only had time to look at the perfect curve described by the comet toward the Sun, as the comet disappeared immediately. It was devoured by the Sun, or if it did not collapse by the heat of the place. The comet was baptized as Soho 6 after his death and is the seventh detected by Lasco. According to astronomers, these small comets around the Sun can be the remains of a large who exploded 900 years ago.

Comets that do not fall to the whirlpool of fire of our star also pay their tax to the Sun. Each time they pass through the area, the diameter decreases a few meters, leaving in it a thousandth part of the mass. The remains of comets and comet tails have slowly formed a disc around the Sun on the same gravitational plane of the planets. This strip of matter emits zodiacal light.