Named after the amateur astronomer who made the discovery, comet Lovejoy has been making headline news lately. The comet belongs to the Kreutz family of comets, and is most likely a small piece of the Great Comet of 1106 which broke apart in our solar system way back in the 12th century. Comet Lovejoy is on a very eccentric or oval shaped orbit which brings it very close to the sun. It's closest approach to the sun occurred a few days ago, passing only 120,000km (75,000 miles) above the sun's surface, which is extremely close! Astronomers expected comet Lovejoy to burn up in the sun's atmosphere, but to their surprise Lovejoy survived! The comet's path was captured by both SOHO and SDO, which are satellites monitoring the sun's activity. Below is a video of a compilation of images taken by both satellites. The blue images show the comet approaching the sun towards the bottom left. The yellow images also show the comet approaching the sun, then exiting the sun's atmosphere. The final set of images have an arrow pointing out the comet, which again enters and exists the sun's atmosphere! The fact that this comet survived means that it's probably much bigger than astronomers predicted; maybe even as larger as 0.5 miles!
