1/18_reflected Lasco C2 images

Update:

COMETS DIVE-BOMB THE SUN: Since it was launched in 1995, SOHO has watched more than 4000 comets fall into the sun. Today alone it happened twice. Coronagraphs onboard the spacecraft caught two sungrazers in mid-disintegration, one bright and one really bright:

Hours after this snapshot was taken, the comets were gone, apparently vaporized by intense solar heat.

The one on the left is a member of the Kreutz family--a swarm of fragments from a giant comet that broke apart many centuries ago. "More than 85% of SOHO comets belong to this group, but this is a VERY bright example," says sungrazing comet expert Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. "We see maybe one like this every year or two. It was probably ~50-meters in diameter but will have been totally destroyed by the sun."

"The comet on the right is a little different," cointinues Battams. "It's a 'non-group' comet--that is, a random, sporadic comet not part of any known family." The fact that it met its doom in the fires of the sun on the same day as the Kreutz sungrazer is a complete coincidence.