Residents Scientists Find The 5,000th Comet Using SOHO Data

The appearance of the 5,000th comet from SOHO images (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA - A citizen scientist from the Czech Republic discovered the latest comet while observing images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The comet is confirmed to be the 5,000th comet. The finder of this project is Hanjie Tan, a participant in NASA-funded Sungrazer project. Tan has participated in the project since 2013. It has found more than 200 comets since 2009 until now.The latest comet Tan has discovered is a comet that belongs to the Marsden group. The group is thought to be related to SOHO's 96P/Machholz comet when Machholz passes near the Sun. The discovery of comets is nothing new. Since SOHO, a joint mission from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1995, the discovery of comets became easy. In fact, SOHO was not launched to search for comets.

SOHO has a science instrument called Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO). This instrument has an artificial disk that blocks light from the Sun so that the environment around the Sun can be done. This tool also allows SOHO to do difficult things for other aircraft, namely finding comets flying near the Sun. SOHO may have recorded more than 5,000 comets, but only comets are shining that can be recognized. SOHO's success was recognized by Sungrazer Project Main Investigator Karl Battams. He said that, "Before the launch of the SOHO mission and the Sungrazer Project, there were only a few dozen solar comets recorded, that's all we know of."

Battams added that, "The fact that we have finally reached this milestone, 5,000 comets, is hard to believe for me." However, this really happened thanks to the presence of SOHO and its reliable instrument, namely LASCO.