[ via Yahoo News ] 17 Dec
"Breaking News! Lovejoy lives! The comet Lovejoy has survived its journey around the sun to reemerge on the other side," SDO researchers tweeted, reports Yahoo News.
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Comet Lovejoy emerged from behind the sun, as seen by the tail and head marked in this SOHO image on Dec. 16, 2011. Credit: NRL/SOHO/LASCO |
A newfound comet defied long odds on Thursday (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.
Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun's corona at about 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.
But Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space.
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