These views of comet ATLAS were captured by SOHO's LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) instrument, which uses a disk to cover the Sun's surface and reveal fainter details in the solar atmosphere (or corona). Although this comet was first spotted in April 2024 by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey, LASCO has helped discover more than 5,000 other comets as they flew past the Sun.
Karl Battams, LASCO's principal investigator at the U.S. Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., processed some of the images to bring out fine details in the comet's tail and create the sequence above. When bright comets like this one pass close to the Sun, their tails often react to fluctuations in the solar wind, a stream of particles and energy constantly flowing off the Sun. Heliophysicists can study the reaction of the tails to better understand the Sun's effects on its neighborhood and on comets passing by.
While it was briefly visible in Northern Hemisphere skies just after sunset near perihelion, comet ATLAS is now slowly receding from the Sun and is best seen from the Southern Hemisphere, where the comet is moving into darker night skies. However, there are signs the comet might have broken up after its pass by the Sun, meaning it could fade rapidly over the coming days.
Related Links
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology
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