A SPACECRAFT has caught a rare sight on camera: two comets losing their heads in the sun while their tails carry on regardless.
Comets are 鈥渄irty snowballs鈥� of ice and dust that zoom around the solar system in elongated orbits. As they near the sun, its heat and light cause material to escape from the snowball, forming a cloud around the head and a tail that can be millions of kilometres long.
On 24 May, NASA鈥檚 SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft revealed two comets approaching the sun. As they passed through its outer atmosphere, the heads vaporised in the heat, but the tails continued on their path. Astronomers had suspected that an object seen near the sun in 1998 was a headless comet. The latest observations confirm that the sun does sometimes decapitate comets.
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