A GODMOTHER and European spacecraft saw how a newly discovered comet, called “Halloween comet” met its demise after its close approach to Sun.

According to NASA, the SOHO spacecraft captured the video below of comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS heading toward the Sun. It reached its closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion, at 7:30 a.m. ET on Monday.

Not to be confused with Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlaswhich dazzled sky watchers throughout October, C/2024 S1 was only recently discovered by an observer in Hawaii on September 27.

However, I hardly knew this comet before it disappeared. As it approached the Sun, the comet began to break into pieces, according to NASA.

“This comet was probably already a pile of debris by the time it entered SOHO’s field of view,” said US Karl Battams of the Naval Research Laboratory, the leader of NASA’s Sungrazer project.

Project Sungrazer is a NASA-funded program based at the US Naval Research Laboratory’s Solar Physics Department that studies comets that approach extremely close to the Sun, helping to better understand the orbits, composition and evolution of comets. Citizen scientists can contribute to the project and have helped find more than 5,000 comets since the project was founded in 1995, according to NASA.

Scientists called this comet a real “sungrazer” because it passed by 1% of Earthits distance to the Sun.

Comet C/2024 S1 ATLAS “was completely vaporized as a result,” NASA said.

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