Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3, which was predicted to vaporize within the atmosphere of our Sun, passed very close to the Sun's surface. Comets are made up of dusty and cold material from our outer solar system that when they get close to our sun begin to vaporize material that gives them a distinctive dusty glow and sometimes show a characteristic tail.
C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) is a periodic comet, classified as a Kreutz Sungrazer. It was discovered on 27 November 2011, by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy.
The comet's perihelion took it through the Sun's corona on 16 December 2011 at 00:35 UTC, at a distance of approximately 510,000 miles (820,000 km). It was not expected to survive the encounter, but the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), as well as other Sun-monitoring spacecraft, observed the comet emerge from the corona intact. Before perihelion, the comet nucleus of Lovejoy had been estimated to be between 100 and 200 meters in diameter, but after surviving perihelion it has been estimated that the nucleus could have been as large as 500 meters before the perihelion passage. At its brightest the comet had an apparent magnitude of around mag. -4 and was about as bright as the planet Venus. It is likely the brightest comet to appear since Comet McNaught of 2007, which shone at visual magnitude -6. However, Lovejoy is largely invisible to the naked eye owing to its proximity to the Sun.
The comet first became visible to the STEREO-A spacecraft on 3 December, and to the SOHO spacecraft on 14 December. Before the comet passed through perihelion, it was the subject of observation campaigns by eighteen instruments on five satellites: STEREO, SOHO, SDO, Hinode and PROBA2.
Terry Lovejoy is an amateur astronomer, from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Lovejoy is known for his modifications to consumer-grade digital cameras for digital camera astrophotography. All digital cameras come with built-in filters that cut off infrared light. Unfortunately, they also cut off some of the red light that many deep space objects emit. After he published procedures to modify those filters, many amateur astronomers were able to improve their deep space photography.
On 15 March 2007, he discovered a new comet with one of the cameras. After confirmation by the IAU, the comet now carries his name.
On 27 November 2011, with the discovery of C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy), he became the first astronomer in over 40 years to discover a Kreutz Sungrazing comet from a ground based observation. This discovery also makes him the only person to have discovered Kreutz sungrazers both from ground based observation and from images obtained by spatial telescopes. The discovery was made using a C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope working at f2.1 with a QHY9 CCD camera.
The asteroid 61342 Lovejoy is named in his honor.
Visit www.spaceweather.com for updated videos and photographs of the comet.
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