Tiny 'sungrazer' comet discovered, photographed and destroyed — all during historic total solar eclipse

A tiny "sungrazer" comet was discovered, photographed and destroyed during the recent total solar eclipse — all within 24 hours. It is one of just a handful of times a comet has been spotted during an eclipse, experts say. 

On Monday (April 8), millions of people across North America watched the moon as it temporarily blocked our home star and its dark shadow raced along the path of totality between Mexico and Canada at more than 1,500 mph (2,400 km/h). The cosmic event, which was also seen from space, was particularly special because of the length of totality — the period when the sun's light was completely obscured — which lasted for up to 4 minutes and 28 seconds.

In the hours leading up to the eclipse, Worachate Boonplod, an amateur astronomer based in Thailand, discovered a small comet near the sun after spotting a faint disruption picked up by the coronagraph on NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Spaceweather.com reported. The comet was named SOHO-5008.

Karl Battams, an astrophysicist and computational scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. and leader of NASA's Sungrazing Comets Project, later predicted on the social platform X that the "tiny" comet could be visible to photographers during totality — and he was right.

As the moon's shadow passed above New Hampshire, amateur astronomer Lin Zixuan snapped the comet during totality, Spaceweather.com reported. In the new image, the comet is barely visible as a minuscule blur in the dark sky.

"Ground-based observations of sungrazing comets are extremely rare" and only possible during eclipses, Battams wrote on X. But the comet was not visible to the naked eye, he added.

Related: When is the next total solar eclipse after 2024 in North America?