The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) caught a rare sight earlier this week: a large comet meeting its doom as it plummeted toward the sun at about 1.3 million mph. Though the comet did not actually fall into the sun on August 4, the large chunk of rock and ice got close enough to be pulverized by the extreme heat and pressure surrounding our host star.
Comets generally have long and highly eccentric orbits around the sun, sending them far out beyond the reaches of Pluto and then pulling them back in for a close embrace. The comet that went out in a blaze of glory a few days ago was first spotted on August 1. It was part of the Kreutz family of comets that broke off from a huge comet hundreds of years ago. Small comets in this family of space rocks are squashed out of existence by the sun every day, but capturing one this big and bright is a rare event.
The images above were taken with a special telescope known as a coronagraph, which blocks the disk of the sun—represented by the white circle—and some of the surrounding light so events that occur near the sun can be observed. The comet is already being scorched into oblivion when it enters the frame of the red GIF—just another fragment of rock snuffed out by the merciless universe.