He took part in the NASA-funded Sungrazer Project – a citizen science project that invites everyone to search for new comets in images from the joint European Space Agency and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO.
The comet, dubbed C / 2020 X3 (SOHO), is known as a Kreutz sungrazer, NASA said. This family of comets originated from a large parent comet that broke up into smaller fragments over a thousand years ago. The sungrazers continue to orbit the sun today.
Boonplod knew the solar eclipse was coming and wondered if his new comet discovery would appear in the sun’s outer atmosphere.
A satellite image of the sun, colored in red, shows a bright spot of light orbiting the sun. Around the time the eclipse image was taken, the comet was traveling at about 450,000 miles per hour, about 2.7 million miles from the surface of the sun, NASA said.
The comet was about 15 meters in diameter – about the length of half a truck, NASA said. It then disintegrated into dust particles as a result of intense solar radiation a few hours before it came closest to the sun.
Kreutz sungrazer comets are most commonly found in SOHO images. The space observatory’s camera works by simulating total solar eclipses: a solid disk blocks the otherwise blinding light from the sun, revealing fainter features in the outer atmosphere and other celestial objects such as comets.
To date, 4,108 comets have been discovered in SOHO images, with this comet being the 3524th Kreutz sun visor observed, NASA said.
As far as is known, no comets have ever hit the sun’s surface or the photosphere, the European Space Agency said.
The Kreutz sungrazers come in about 50,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) from the surface, just through the lower parts of the solar atmosphere (the corona). Usually they evaporate in the hot solar atmosphere.