The 5000th Comet Discovered Using Space-Based Sun Observatory
The ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has officially discovered 5000 comets. Comet number 5000 was spotted in SOHO images.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer: Lacey Young (MORI Associates)
Editor: Lacey Young (MORI Associates)
Videographer: Joy Ng (National Institute of Aerospace)
Advisor: Beth Anthony (MORI Associates)
Scientist: Karl Battams (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer: Lacey Young (MORI Associates)
Editor: Lacey Young (MORI Associates)
Videographer: Joy Ng (National Institute of Aerospace)
Advisor: Beth Anthony (MORI Associates)
Scientist: Karl Battams (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)
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TechTranscript
00:00 When I began with the Sungrazer project, we had less than a thousand comets, that was over 20 years ago.
00:06 So the fact that we've finally reached this milestone, 5,000 comets, is just unbelievable to me.
00:13 Sungrazer project is a project that allows anyone, anywhere in the world, to sit down with a laptop and discover comets.
00:22 The clue to what a sun grazing comet is kind of in the name there. It's literally a comet that grazes by the sun.
00:28 The Sungrazer project relies exclusively on images of the sun from spacecrafts.
00:35 And the images that we discover nearly all of our comets in, come from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO.
00:44 That is a satellite that was launched in 1995, so it's been operating for a long time now.
00:50 3, 2, 1, ignition and liftoff of SOHO and the Atlas vehicle on an international mission of solar physics.
01:01 Our participants go to the SOHO website where we have all of our latest images from the spacecraft, and they download those images.
01:09 And it's really as simple as looking through them, flicking through the image, and looking for something tiny and faint and moving in a different direction to the stars.
01:19 Discovering a comet is a very unique feeling.
01:25 You have this realization that suddenly you've found a piece of the solar system, a piece of the universe, that no one has ever seen before.
01:33 Prior to the launch of the SOHO mission and the Sungrazer project, there were only a couple of dozen sun grazing comets on record.
01:43 That's all we knew existed.
01:44 The 5,000 comet milestone is a huge achievement. It's one that none of us dreamed we would even get to.
01:52 So simply the statistics of 5,000 comets and looking at their orbits and trajectories through space is a super unique data set.
02:03 It's a really valuable science.
02:04 And it is just a testament to the countless hours the project participants have put into this.
02:13 We absolutely would not, under any circumstance, be here if it wasn't for what our project volunteers have done.
02:20 That's really what 5,000 comets represents.
02:23 It's 20 or more years of invaluable discoveries from the project volunteers.
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