After six years, fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a game from domestic developer Warhorse, got a sequel. The studio presented the title Deliverance II, which follows its predecessor, which sold around 6 million copies, and …
Of course, not everyone managed to catch the comet, mainly because of the cloudy weather in many places in the eclipse zone, points out the astronomer and popular astronomy Petr Horálek from The aforementioned Opava Institute, which went to Durango, Mexico, to look at the phenomenon at the time.
Photo: NASA/ESA
Comet SOHO-5008 on the LASCO C2 coronagraph image of the SOHO satellite
According to him, the biggest surprise was when it came out, in addition to the aforementioned comet Pons-Brooks, a second comet appeared, named SOHO-5008 , near the Sun during an eclipse.
It was discovered by an astronomer from Thailand
So it was discovered just shortly before the eclipse, and during the phenomenon across Mexico, the US and Canada, it gradually disintegrated above the sun. Shortly after two o’clock in the morning on April 9 (that is, just a few hours after the eclipse of the sun in Canada), it became completely above the sun.
“Comet SOHO-5008 was discovered by Thai astronomer Worachate Boonpold in images from SOHO (European-American Space Observatory – editor’s note) before and after the eclipse, Karl Battams of the US Naval Research Lab informed astronomers that it might be bright enough to record during a total solar eclipse. The first picture of the comet was then published by the Chinese astronomer Lin Zixuan, who, based on an uncertain prediction, discovered it in his photographs of the solar eclipse taken at Third Connecticut Lake (lake in the US state of New Hampshire – editor’s note)“, explained Horálek.
Photo: Lin Zixuan
Comet SOHO-5008 as seen from Third Connecticut Lake
“I didn’t find out about the comet until a few hours later, and since I was photographing, among other things, a wide area with a series of different exposures, it was clear to me that I can be in my pictures as well. And as it happened, she was there,” Horálek said.
“It’s rare to see a comet during a total solar eclipse,” continued a local enthusiast who managed to photograph comet SOHO-5008 during an observation from Durango, Mexico.
“In the past 1,600 years, there have only been seven such observations, with five of these seven cases being comets visible to the naked eye, and the last two cases – since 2008 and 2020 – only in their photo successes,” he said.
Photo: Lin Zixuan
The two comets (12P/Pons-Brooks and SOHO-5008) during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024
Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics in Opava accompanied Josef Kujal from the Astronomical Society in Hradec Králové and Milan Hlaváč. They saw the phenomenon from the southeast side of the city of Durango, where they managed to get a lot of data for later processing, despite the strong wind and partly cloudy weather. The results of this trip are still being processed and will be published in the coming weeks or months. The results obtained will then be used for educational and scientific purposes.
Photo: NASA/ESA
Photo: Lin Zixuan
Photo: Lin Zixuan
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