Suicidal comet Lovejoy has survived its brush with death in the furnace of the Sun, emerging from behind the star in one (smaller) piece.
[video=youtube]Suicidal comet Lovejoy has survived its brush with death in the furnace of the Sun, emerging from behind the star in one (smaller) piece.[/video]
Most space boffins thought that the comet, composed of ice and rocks, couldn't survive its trajectory so close to the heat of the Sun - and expected Lovejoy to disintegrate. But instead, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory filmed the comet coming out on the other side.
"It's absolutely astounding," said Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. "I did not think the comet's icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us."
In the SDO's videos, the comet's tail is seen wriggling wildly as it passes just 12,000km above the Sun's fiery surface
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