Watch the Comet ATLAS Fly Into the Sun and Burn Up

Jeremy Gray

Split image showing a bright comet streaking toward the Sun. The left side captures the Sun with flaring rays and a dark circle in the center, while the right side focuses on the comet with a glowing white tail against a dark red background.

Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), which some hoped might be a nice Halloween treat and great follow-up act to the stunning comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) dazzled the skies throughout October, has evaporated after flying into the Sun. It turns out C/2024 S1 is more trick than treat.

As Space reports, NASA and the European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured C/2024 S1 flying into the super-hot embrace of the Sun, evaporating into nonexistence.

A red and orange solar image showing a burst of energy and light radiating outward from the sun, captured by a solar observatory. The date and time stamp on the bottom left reads 2024/10/28 13:48.

Unlike C/2023 A3, C/2024 S1 was never bright enough to be visible to the naked eye from Earth. At its closest point to the planet on October 23, the comet’s magnitude peaked at just 8.7. However, despite being too dim to spot easily, people did use telescopes and cameras to photograph C/2024 S1 before it disintegrated, including Australian astronomer and comet expert Con Stoitsis.

Alas, for anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to spot C/2024 S1 earlier this month, there will never be another chance. The comet was only discovered last month, on September 27, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. C/2024 S1, like every other comet, was comprised primarily of frozen gases, rocks, and dust.

C/2024 S1 was a Kreutz sungrazer, a family of sungrazing comets characterized by orbital paths that bring them very close to the Sun. These comets can be as far as a hundred times farther from the Sun than the Earth at aphelion, and as close as two solar radii away from the Sun at their closest approach. Unsurprisingly, this latter trait of Kreutz sungrazers can result in their deaths.

However, while C/2024 S1 never achieved notable brightness, some Kreutz comets have been spectacular, with some even visible from Earth during the daytime. Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965, believed to be among the brightest comets of the last 1,000 years, reached a magnitude of -10 at its perihelion, its closest point to Earth. For reference, the brightest star in the sky as seen from Earth is Sirius, which has an apparent magnitude of -1.44, per Michigan State University’s list of brightest stars. Sirius is visible in the sky during the day in favorable conditions, so imagine how bright Ikeya-Seki looked to viewers in 1965.

Perhaps the next Kreutz sungrazer will get brighter than C/2024 S1. Maybe it will even become bright enough to see during the day.

Image credits: ESA/NASA SOHO

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