[meteorite-list] New bright sungrazing comet about to enter SOHO LASCO field of view

From: Matson, Robert D. <ROBERT.D.MATSON_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:49:45 -0700
Message-ID: <7C640E28081AEE4B952F008D1E913F1704CB0B3C_at_0461-its-exmb04.us.saic.com>

Hi All,

Most of you probably haven't heard about this yet, so I thought I'd
give you a heads up that the brightest sungrazing comet since Comet
Lovejoy last year will soon be entering the SOHO LASCO C3 field of
view. It was discovered in SWAN images last week by Vladimir Bezugly,
and confirmed by me over the weekend in imagery both from SWAN
and STEREO-B.

Most are assuming that this is probably a Kreutz family comet,
but due to the coarseness of the SWAN data (both spatially and
temporally), non-Kreutz orbital solutions are still possible.
It will be interesting to see if the comet is bright enough to
potentially survive perihelion passage as Comet Lovejoy did.
Of course, that will depend a lot on the orbit; for instance,
right now I get some orbital solutions that actually intersect
the sun late on March 14th. --Rob
Received on Mon 12 Mar 2012 03:49:45 PM PDT