"Newfound Comet SWAN could soon fizzle out of view"
During the next couple of weeks we'll have a chance of seeing a new comet as it sweeps past the sun. The comet's name is SWAN, an acronym for the Solar Wind Anisotropies camera on NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Officially designated as C/2020 F8, the comet was discovered by Australian amateur astronomer, Michael Mattiazzo, while exploring SWAN imagery on March 25. Comet SWAN initially caught Mattiazzo's attention because it apparently was undergoing a sudden outburst of hydrogen gas — something that SOHO's SWAN instrument is particularly well adapted to picking up. Water ice from the comet's nucleus evaporates as the comet approaches the sun. Solar ultraviolet radiation splits up water molecules, and the liberated hydrogen atoms glow in ultraviolet light. The comet was 135 million miles (217 million kilometers) from the sun when Mattiazzo first saw it, but it will ultimately come to within 40.2 million miles (64.6 million km) of ...