Are the SOHO comets visible from the ground?
Mostly no. There have only been five comets discovered by SOHO that have later gone on to be visible from the ground. Most of the comets are far too small and too close to the Sun to be seen from Earth. (NOTE: Never point a telescope or binoculars at, or near, the Sun without using a special solar filter! Failure to do so will almost certainly result in blindness!) • Why don’t all of SOHO’s comets have tails? Actually, most of SOHO’s comets do have tails. It’s just that the comets are so small, their tails do not show up very well in the images. Upon close inspection, most of the Kreutz-group comets do look slightly elongated, even if they don’t have an obvious tail. • Do the SOHO comets hit the surface of the Sun? None of SOHO’s comets are known to have hit the surface of the Sun. The majority of the comets we discover, namely those belonging to the Kreutz group, are believed to burn up in the solar atmosphere, instead of hitting the Sun’s surface. This is not to say, however, that Kr
