This comet was first spotted in satellite data by Thai amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod on the NASA-funded
Around the time the eclipse photo was taken, the comet was traveling at a speed of about 7.24.205 km per hour, about 4.3 million km from the surface of the sun.
The comet was about 15 meters in diameter – about the length of a semi-truck. It then disintegrated into dust particles due to intense solar radiation a few hours before reaching closest to the sun.
Sungrazer is a citizen science project that invites everyone to search images of the joint for and discover new comets
Boonplod discovered the comet a day before the solar eclipse.
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“He knew the solar eclipse was coming, and was curious if his new comet discovery would appear in the sun’s outer atmosphere as a tiny dot on eclipse photos,” the US space agency said in a statement late Saturday.
The comet, dubbed C / 2020 X3 (SOHO) by the Minor Planet Center, is a “Kreutz” sunrazer.
This family of comets originated from a large parent comet that broke up into smaller fragments over a thousand years ago and continues to orbit the sun.
Kreutz’s singing comets are most commonly found in SOHO images.
To date, 4,108 comets have been discovered in SOHO images, with this comet being the 3524th Kreutz sungrazer observed, according to NASA.
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