New sticky: I rarely tweet these days, mainly b/c most of the fun people have left. 😕 But I still pop in from time-to-time, and will post about exciting comet or Sun stuff. As always, any images/data I post are from 100% public sources, and all opinions are solely mine.

Behold daylight comet!! C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) 2025-01-14 02:06 UTC (10:06 am MYT) Elongation 5.3º Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia It was surprisingly easy to see from the computer screen,albeit only 5.3 deg from the Sun! #astronomy #astrophotography

As many have pointed out, the LASCO images on the SOHO website are saturated. So this is the result of my own algo for processing them. And I will echo my sentiments from yesterday: This. Comet. Is. RIDICULOUS! 🤩😍 ☄️🔭☀️

Image should say 2025. Sonofa.... 🤬😣

I REALLY can't get over just how beautiful this comet is in our LASCO images! I mean, I've seen more than a handful of comets over the years (~5,200 to be exact - not that I'm counting...) But I've really gotta say... this might be the pick o' the bunch right here. WOW 😱😍☄️☀️🔭

Antares and M4 are center-stage in SOHO/LASCO C3 today. Milky Way turns up later this month ☀️🔭 https://t.co/1iYjLF4cy0

Eleven years ago today 😳 Comet ISON certainly captured the attention of a global audience! Sadly it didn't survive, but the memories live on! ☄️☀️🔭

Here's the data we have so far showing the new (soon-to-be-vaporized) sungrazing comet in our LASCO C3 field of view. Lots of beautiful CME's kicking off too! 😍 See for yourself at the SOHO movie theater: https://t.co/RBixwzlyKp

*That's a very simplistic summary of "solar energetic particles". There's a great explainer in these videos:

The new sungrazer continues to perk up! Lots of solar activity overnight too, and we seem to have a moderate particle storm in the images (the white "snow"). These are relativistic (i.e. near speed of light) particles blasted out by flares/CMEs*, that reach SOHO within ~minutes

Spoiler, for those of you who are new to this: there is approximately 0.000% chance of this comet surviving past the Sun. It's very small (maybe 10 - 20 meters?) and may already be mostly a rubble pile. But we can at least admire its demise as it unfolds

Is there a lot of bad stuff on here now? Sure. And lots of good people have left. But there are still good people here, too. I'd stand on a street corner and talk science to a stranger if they asked me. So I now have two street corners, and whoever wants to listen can listen 🙃

...please note that I'm not passing any judgement on ppl staying or leaving here. Everyone has their own reasons. Personally, I just like reading/sharing cool sciencey stuff, and will do that anywhere I have an audience 🤓☄️☀️

BTW, I am also now dipping my toes in the water over at that new place. I don't post much *anywhere*, because {busy}, but I can post two places at once, I think. https://t.co/e27WOcuwIg Also...

Something to 👀. New sungrazing comet in ESA/NASA SOHO/LASCO C3, found last night by citizen scientist Zesheng Yang. It should get pretty bright -- maybe Vmag 5 or so? Right now it's hard to spot, but it'll be easy to see by tmrw. ☄️☀️ https://t.co/1iYjLF4cy0

Wheeeeee! ☄️ ESA/NASA’s Sun-watching SOHO spacecraft spied comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS (entering from bottom right) as it darted toward the Sun. The comet reached its perihelion, or closest approach of the Sun, today at 7:30am ET.

Either way, C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) was certainly no Hale-Bopp*, and was destroyed long before getting near the Sun. Was cool to watch tho 😎 (*If my back-of-envelope math is right, you could fit roughly *4-million* S1s into one Hale-Bopp, assuming 200-meter diameter for ATLAS 😯)

An old comet colleague of mine (RIP Prof John Brown) felt that a Hale-Bopp-like comet hitting the Sun would transfer enough (kinetic) energy to give off a signature similar to a large solar flare. That always sounded plausible to me, but I haven't done the math.

"But IF a comet hit the Sun, could it cause a CME?" Meh, the jury's out on that one. It's not *implausible* that if you dumped enough material into just the right instability on the Sun, maybe you'd trigger *something*(?). But it's still a mosquito hitting an aircraft carrier 🤷‍♂️

"So why do we often see sungrazing comets right before CME's?" Because on average we see a comet every 2-ish days, and at solar max (like now) we can see a dozen or more CME's per day. The chances of these unrelated events coinciding are thus very high!

And no it didn't cause a CME! How do I know? Mainly b/c none of its material could've possibly reached the low corona where CME's start -- its perihelion distance was way too high, even assuming any dust survived to that point (also v. unlikely)