Suicide Comet Pulls Through, After All

Despite overwhelming odds, comet Lovejoy somehow managed to avoid being entirely disintegrated by solar heat, after passing within 140,000 kilometers (87,000 miles) of the Sun's surface. Astronomers thought it to be a goner for sure.

No other sungrazer comet has ever been observed to escape a head-on encounter with the Sun and survive. These objects are made up of rocks and ice, and every drop of water in them would be vaporized by the intense heat of the Sun.

With this in mind, it's easy to understand how they were surprised when the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) saw Lovejoy on the other side of star, going about its merry business. “I expected a diffuse dust tail to survive (for several hours) before fading away but NOT any kind of nucleus!” Karl Battams says.

The expert, who has been working with sungrazers for 8 years, has never seen anything like this happening before, Space reports. Props to Lovejoy for overcoming its depression.