NSN Webinar Series: the Science of Sungrazing Comets

Sungrazing and near-Sun comets represent well over half of all officially cataloged comets, yet are among the most poorly-understood objects in our solar system. Most of these comets follow orbits through space that place them into the most extreme environment our solar system has to offer, most often leading to a one-way death-plunge into the searing solar corona, at velocities exceeding 0.2% the speed of light! In this seminar Dr. Battams will begin with an overview of the discovery of these comets, most of which are found via the NASA-funded “Sungrazer” Citizen Science project, and the variety of Sun-watching spacecraft that discover and observe them. He will then briefly describe the various quirks of these comets including their physical and orbital properties, and discuss their tendency for clustering and fragmentation.  Then, for the remainder of the seminar, he will provide details on the variety of science that we can learn from these comets, which not only allow us to explore fundamental properties of comets, but also to gain entirely unique science regarding the Sun’s outer atmosphere and solar outflows.

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