LASCO THE GREAT COMET HUNTER

Because LASCO watches the Sun nearly all the time it has become a very good comet spotter!

Image courtesy of the LASCO/SOHO consortium. SOHO is a mission of international cooperation between of ESA and NASA.

Check out this LASCO movie of Comet Hyakutake, May 1996 (1.9 Mb, Quick Time)

Comet Hyakutake passes close to the Sun. You can see it has two tails. One of these is made of dust and the other is made of gas.

Also because LASCO can look near to the Sun it has discovered over fifty comets that come very close to the Sun, called sungrazers. A comet is like a dirty snowball moving around the Sun. As it gets close to the Sun the heat starts to melt the comet and a long tail forms. All sungrazers are really pieces of a larger comet that broke up. They come so close to the Sun, passing through its atmosphere that they completely burn up. It's dangerous to graze on the Sun!

The Sun takes a double whammy !! (1.5 Mb, Quick Time)

Race to the death - two sungrazing comets race to a fiery end!

LASCO was built so that we could get a better view of the Sun's corona but as a bonus we get to see lots of stars in the background and some of the planets as they orbit the Sun!

Image courtesy of the LASCO/SOHO consortium. SOHO is a mission of international cooperation between of ESA and NASA.

Have a look at these movies of what LASCO sees in the "background" while it's staring at the Sun.