Coronagraphic observations of two new sungrazing comets

Abstract

We recently reported the discovery¹ of a comet (Howard-Koomen-Michels: 1979 XI) that apparently collided with the Sun on 30 August 1979. We now report observations of two additional sungrazers that encountered the Sun on 27 January 1981 and 20 July 1981, respectively. Like comet 1979 XI, these two new comets seem to have been members of the Kreutz group of sungrazers^2–4, and like 1979 XI the new comets did not reappear after their encounters with the Sun. The discovery of three previously unreported comets during the initial 2.3 yr of our satellite coronal observations leads us to suspect that sungrazers are much more common than one might suppose from the list of only nine known sungrazers observed during the years 1668–1970^5,6.