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The comet in the video strikes the sun almost in the center and is completely evaporated by the heat of the star. Comets of this class fly very close to the surface of the sun and are often erased.
On Thursday, the SOHO space telescope (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) recorded a spectacular video of a comet plunging directly into the sun.
In the video, an observer can see a number of celestial bodies, including a luminous Venus located very close to the Sun (whose image is blocked by an opaque disk to increase visibility), a less brilliant Mars in farther orbit and the "Kreutz sungrazer" comet diving almost directly into the center of the sun.
This is not the first time SOHO has detected a comet this summer. On June 20, the observatory captured two comets – a Kreutz sraschrazer and a 'Meyer sunskirter' – approaching the sun.
The sungrazers of Kreutz form a family of comets very close to the Sun, sometimes thousands of kilometers away from its surface, and named after the astronomer Heinrich Kreutz who proved that these comets are actually fragments of 39, a larger comet. Sunkirters are comets that do not approach the sun like sungrazers.
Earlier in 2016, SOHO had documented a similar collision while another Kreutz sungrader had struck our star at about 373 miles per second.
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