On June 25, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) discovered its 1,500th comet. This tally tops all other comet discoverers throughout history combined.
From ESA:
When it comes to comet catching, the SOHO has one big advantage over everybody else: its location. Situated between the Sun and Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface, we can see regions close to the Sun clearly only during an eclipse.
Roughly 85% of SOHO discoveries are fragments from a once-great comet that split apart in a death plunge around the Sun, probably many centuries ago. The fragments are known as the Kreutz group and now pass within 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface when they return from deep space.
At this proximity, which is a near miss in celestial terms, most of the fragments are finally destroyed, evaporated by the Sun's fearsome radiation ― within sight of SOHO’s electronic eyes.
“This is allowing us to see how comets die,” says Battams. When a comet constantly circles the Sun, it loses a little more ice each time, until it eventually falls to pieces, leaving a long trail of fragments. Thanks to SOHO, astronomers now have a plethora of images showing this process. “It's a unique data set and could not have been achieved in any other way,” says Battams.
All this is on top of the extraordinary revelations that SOHO has provided over the 13 years it has been in space, observing the Sun and the near-Sun environment. “Catching the enormous total of comets has been an unplanned bonus,” says Bernhard Fleck, ESA SOHO Project Scientist.
We are in the golden age of solar system research. Phoenix is digging away at Mars, Cassini is at Saturn, New Horizons is on its way to Pluto, two rovers are still operating on the Red Planet, Stardust brought back comet particles, and Venus Express orbits our sister planet. And now, SOHO has more comets than baseball pitchers Cy Young, Warren Spahn, and Roger Clemens have wins, combined.