Yeah, that paper and this one - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - give some details (I was co-author on both). In short: comet loses dust chunk; chunk falls apart; chunks of the chunk fall apart; chunks of the chunks of the chunk fall apart... etc... aka "cascading fragmentation".

Individual curves are here: lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=... I could probably plot them... As for the original purpose of them... 🤷 I can ask some of the retirees what the thinking was.

PUNCH images would look a lot like C3 Clear, but with a wider fov.

Yes!! Plus... SOHO was actually "lost" for ~3 months in '98, spinning out of control, and effectively frozen solid. The recovery was nothing short of miraculous! A great account of it can be found in "Saving SOHO", linked via: soho.nascom.nasa.gov/about/Recove...

Yep, that processing is equally fantastic. It's all fantastic! 😊

Here's the last frame in the sequence, minus the mp4/streaming compression. Still a tad over-exposed in my processing, but certainly much better than the default processing we see on the SOHO site.

Yeah there's a lot going on in these images - I don't want to speculate too much on exactly what. This is a particularly special comet for sure, though. And we will absolutely miss LASCO when it's gone ☹️

AAARRGHHH!!!!! 🤬😖😫

Yes it should. Sigh.

No problem! The wikipedia article is pretty good: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2024_...

Be skeptical of media sources (some are great, others less so), and always feel free to reach out with questions!

☹️ Worth a shot! One day, hopefully we'll have a sungrazer we can all see in the daytime!

That's still unknown. It's possible, but the LASCO cameras don't have the kind of resolution to tell us that. We might have clues in the next few days... Maybe...

Yeah I don't think it's quite naked eye. It's like vmag -2.5 or so. LASCO images look amazing tho!

I've seen several images from folks capturing it during the daytime, so it is *technically* possible! Just of course take all the kind of precautions you'd expect to take when pointing magnifying optics near the Sun...😵😬 And report back if you get it! 😊

The Comet Observer’s Data Base (COBS) currently lists the comet at magnitude -3.7 ‘with a bullet’. Petr Horálek snapped this view of the comet at sunrise on January 11th over Spisske Podrhadie, Slovakia:

Zoomed in. No processing at all

The comet has been imaged during the day by Nick James, Chelmsford, UK. See groups.io/g/comets-ml/...
Elongation ~8°. Max mag expected on Jan 12/13.
Note: Never look directly at the Sun with the naked eye or with any unfiltered optical device, such as binoculars or a telescope!
☄️🔭 #CometWatch