SESDA II Staff Help Find Comets Near the Sun
January 6, 2009
SOHO image
One of SESDA II’s showcase missions is the Solar and Heliospheric Obervatory (SOHO), extensively supported on both the research and operations side by 10 of our staff. Between December 21 and 23 the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the SOHO spacecraft captured four comets, bringing the SOHO comet count total to a remarkable 1588. This event was spotlighted in the popular CNN Space Spotlight web page. See the accompanying figure: the red image at lower left is the LASCO image, with the yellow streak a new comet!
