A sungrazing comet is a comet that passes extremely close to the Sun at perihelion – sometimes within a few thousand kilometres of the Sun's surface. While small sungrazers can be completely evaporated during such a close approach to the Sun, larger sungrazers can survive many perihelion passages. However, the strong evaporation and tidal forces they experience often lead to their fragmentation.
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The most famous sungrazers are the Kreutz Sungrazers, which all originate from one giant comet that broke up into many smaller comets during its first passage through the inner solar system. An extremely bright comet seen by Aristotle and Ephorus in 371 BC is a possible candidate for this parent comet.
The Great Comets of 1843 and 1882, and Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965 were all fragments of the original comet. Each of these three was briefly bright enough to be visible in the daytime sky, next to the Sun, outshining even the full moon.
In 1979, C/1979 Q1 (SOLWIND) was the first sungrazer to be spotted by US satellite P78-1, in coronographs taken on 30 and 31 Aug 1979.[1]
Since the launch of the SOHO satellite in 1995, hundreds of tiny Kreutz Sungrazers have been discovered, all of which have either plunged into the sun or been destroyed completely during their perihelion passage, with the exception of C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). The Kreutz family of comets is apparently much larger than previously suspected. It will only be a matter of time before another large member of the group passes through the inner solar system and gives a display to rival the great Kreutz comets of the past.
About 83% of the sungrazers observed with SOHO are members of the Kreutz group.[2] The other 17% contains some sporadic sungrazers, but three other related groups of comets have been identified among them: the Kracht, Marsden and Meyer groups. The Marsden and Kracht groups both appear to be related to Comet 96P/Machholz, which is also the parent of two meteor streams, the Quadrantids and the Arietids. It is considered that both Marsden and Kracht groups have a small period, but Meyer group rather have intermediate or long period because Meyer comets have high orbit inclination. The Great Comet of 1680 was a sungrazer and while used by Newton to verify Kepler's equations on orbital motion, it was not a member of any larger groups.
Studies show that for comets with high orbital inclinations and perihelion distances of less than about 2 astronomical units, the cumulative effect of gravitational perturbations over many orbits is adequate to reduce the perihelion distance to very small values. One study has suggested that Comet Hale-Bopp has about a 15% chance of eventually becoming a sungrazer.
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