Ever wondered what happens when a cosmic snowball strikes the sun at 300 miles per second? Well, your curiosity is about to be rewarded …
Witness the awesome display captured by NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) that seems to be some errant alien missile targeting the sun. This class of suicidal comets, known as sungrazers, are the daredevils of the galaxy, plunging to a quick and fiery death in the sun’s turbulent photosphere (that’s the surface, for those who snoozed through science class).