Kreutz sungrazer

Kreutz sungrazer

The Kreutz sungrazers are a family of sungrazing comets. Their orbits take them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. They are believed to be fragments of one large comet that broke up several centuries ago and are named for German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz. Several members of the Kreutz family have become great comets, occasionally visible in the daytime sky.

About Kreutz sungrazer in brief

Summary Kreutz sungrazerThe Kreutz sungrazers are a family of sungrazing comets. Their orbits take them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. They are believed to be fragments of one large comet that broke up several centuries ago and are named for German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz. Several members of the Kreutz family have become great comets, occasionally visible near the Sun in the daytime sky. The most recent of these was Comet Ikeya–Seki in 1965, which may have been one of the brightest comets in the last millennium. It has been suggested that another cluster of bright Kreutz system comets may begin to arrive in the inner Solar System in the next few years to decades. Amateur astronomers have been successful at discovering Kreutz comets using the data available in real time via the internet. The progenitor of all Kreutz Sungrazers observed to date is thought to be the Great Comet X1106 C1, which was visible to the naked eye during the winter of 372–371 BC. The Great Comet of 1882 was an extremely bright comet, as well as a prominent tail with a reddish nucleus. It was observed by Aristotle and Ephorus during the period in which it was visible in which the comet was brighter than any star in the sky. It is believed to have had an extremely long, reddish, nucleus with a prominent, prominent tail. The comet of 1680 proved to be unrelated to this family of comets and the next one did not appear until 1945.

Two further sungrazer appeared in the 1960s, Comet Pereyra in 1963 and Comet I keya–seki, which became extremely bright in 1965 and broke into three pieces after its peri helion passage. The group generally has an Inclination of roughly 140 degrees, a peri Helion distance of around 0. 01 AU, and a Longitude of ascending node of 340–10°. More than 4000 of smallerMembers of the family, some only a few meters across, have been discovered since the launch of the SOHO satellite in 1995. None of these smaller comets have survived its perohelion passage, but larger comets such as the Great comet of 1843 and C2011 W3 have survived their peri HELION passage. Some astronomers suggested that perhaps they were all one comet, whose orbital period was somehow being drastically shortened. An alternative suggestion was that the comets were all fragments of an earlier Sun-grazing comet. This idea was first proposed in 1880, and its plausibility was amply demonstrated when the Greatomet of 1872 broke up into several fragments after itsperihelio passage. The three most impressive Comets of all have been the Comets X1105 C1 and Great Comets 1882 and 1882, easily easily visible in the day sky in daytime sky, and the Comet of 371BC Comet X1106 BC.