NASA’s SOHO telescope has just captured the last few moments of a comet as it smashed into the Sun. The Comet SWAN, presently officially known as C/2012 E2 (SWAN), can be clearly seen plunging into the Sun. SOHO’s LASCO C2 and C3 camera took the photos, which were then stitched up to form a High-Definition video.

The point to note is that SWAN did not actually crash into the Sun. There was no contact – it vaporized much before that. The nearest distance calculated turns out to be 350,000 km away from the Solar surface, but probably, the comet was gone much before that.

Here is a stunning photo snapped by the LASCO C2 camera, which clearly shows the SWAN comet before its demise.

Comet Swan can be clearly seen on the bottom left quarter (Courtesy: NASA, SOHO)

SWAN was a bright comet. Comet scientists were quite enthusiastic about it. Its doom was predicted by many and so SOHO knew exactly what to look for – and found it. Take a look at this spectacular video, all in 1080p goodness!

Please note that the ensuing solar flare seen in the video occurring diametrically opposite to the SWAN comet’s trajectory is just a coincidence. The two events occur hours apart and the solar flare is completely uncorrelated to the cometary demise. No comet is big enough to cause that big a disturbance on the Sun’s surface.

Enjoy the carnage.