Related papers: Where are the Mini Kreutz-family Comets?

Most Kreutz family sungrazing comets are discovered only days before perihelion, severely limiting observational opportunities to study their physical nature and decay. Kreutz sungrazer C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) was discovered a month before…

The structure of the Kreutz system of sungrazing comets is shown to be much more complex than formerly believed. Marsden's (1989) division into three subgroups (I, II, IIa) is now greatly expanded, as new evidence is being offered on nine…

We present a summary of the more than 3,000 sungrazing and near-Sun comets discovered in coronagraph images returned by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), since its launch in December 1995. We address each of the four main…

We examine properties of the population of SOHO/STEREO (dwarf) Kreutz sungrazing comets from 2004 to 2013, including the arrival rates, peculiar gaps, and a potential relationship to the spectacular comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). Selection…

Comet C/2002 S2, a member of the Kreutz family of Sungrazing comets, was discovered in white light images of the SOHO/LASCO coronagraph on 2002 September 18 and observed in \hi\, \lya\, emission by the SOHO/UVCS instrument at four different…

I summarize and streamline the results of recent modeling of the orbital evolution and cascading fragmentation of the Kreutz sungrazers. The model starts with Aristotle's comet -- the progenitor whose nucleus is assumed to be a contact…

In the context of a recently proposed contact-binary model of the Kreutz system, all its members are products of the process of cascading fragmentation of the two lobes of the parent, Aristotle's comet of 372 BC. This process presumably…

The nearly continuous stream of miniature comets dominated by the Kreutz sungrazers has been an unexpected bonanza for cometary science initiated by the launch of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in 1995. Over the nearly 30…

Tidal fragmentation at perihelion and nontidal fragmentation elsewhere cause the orbital distribution of Kreutz sungrazers of all sizes to be extremely complicated and highly nonuniform. Among the features are (largely fortuitous) clusters…

Data on perihelion fragmentation of the Great September Comet of 1882 (C/1882 R1), a prominent member of the Kreutz sungrazer system, are employed to estimate the size of the nucleus along the radius vector at the time of splitting. The…

Until the second half of the 19th century, two or more brief appearances of bright comets, such as the ones in 1668 and 1702, alike in aspect and motion, seen with a tail near the Sun, were almost universally believed to be periodic returns…

Twin STEREO spacecraft pre-perihelion photometric and polarimetric observations of the sungrazing Kreutz comet C/2010 E6 (STEREO) in March 2010 at heliocentric distances $3-28~R_{\odot}$ were investigated using a newly-created set of…

We present an analysis of comet activity based on the Spitzer Space Telescope component of the Survey of the Ensemble Physical Properties of Cometary Nuclei. We show that the survey is well suited to measuring the activity of Jupiter-family…

I investigate the nature of the transient nebulous companions to the sungrazing comet C/1882 R1, known as the Great September Comet. The features were located several degrees to the southwest of the comet's head and reported independently…

A vast majority of bright comets between the late 2nd century and the early 18th century, moving in potentially Kreutz orbits according to Hasegawa & Nakano (2001), was first sighted between 2 and 16 days after perihelion, thanks to the…

We present the history of investigation of the dynamical properties of pairs and groups of genetically related long-period comets (other than the Kreutz sungrazing system). Members of a comet pair or group move in nearly identical orbits…

Most of the sungrazing comets observed by LASCO at SOHO belong to the Kreutz group of comets and follow trajectories that are tightly clumped in space. Statistical analysis of 9 years of SOHO observations suggests that the true apparition…

In the context of the recently proposed contact-binary model (Sekanina 2021), I investigate the circumstances of the first perihelion passage of the Kreutz sungrazers in orbits with barycentric periods near 735 yr, following the initial…

We present the results of our orbital computations in support of the recently proposed contact-binary model for the Kreutz sungrazer system (Sekanina 2021, 2022). We demonstrate that comet Ikeya-Seki (C/1965 S1) previously passed perihelion…

We present photometric and morphological analysis of the behavior of sungrazing comet C/2012 S1 ISON in SOHO and STEREO images around its perihelion on 2013 November 28.779 UT. ISON brightened gradually November 20-26 with a superimposed…