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tone

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music

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Hi, I am Karl Battams. I am

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a computational scientist and astrophysicist from the Naval Research

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Lab. Everything you are seeing in this movie

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is based on actual data, so actually, every single

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dot that you see in this movie is a real comet that has been

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discovered or observed by SOHO. SOHO is

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the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, so it's a joint

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mission between NASA and the European Space Agency.

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SOHO's mission was to study and understand the

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sun and the region of space surrounding the sun and all of

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cool, awesome, explosive stuff that the sun does. There

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was never any intention for SOHO to be

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a comet discoverer

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The reason SOHO has been so successful at finding these comets is because it has got this

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wonderful instrument on the spacecraft that offers us a view

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of the inner solar system that we just cannot get from

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any telescope on Earth. The different colors in this movie represent

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different families or populations of comets

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that SOHO is observing. The red comets, these

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are Kreutz sungrazer. The green comets are

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Maya group comets. The only exception is the yellow one

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that you see. These are what we call non-group comets. These do not

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belong to any family. You see as these objects

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are flying in toward the sun, they are not really going in a straight line, they are following a curve.

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That curve is because of the sun's gravity.

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The closer a comet gets to the sun, the faster

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it goes, and then they slow down again as they move away from the sun.

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One of the really awesome facts that I love

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about the sungrazers, in particular the Kreutz comets that you are seeing in red,

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they are the fastest object

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in our solar system that aren't particles.

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They get so close to the sun, that they

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are traveling at over 600 km/sec, that's not

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.2% of the speed of light.

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It is just an inconceiveable velocity for

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pretty much anything that's not particle, but for a big

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house-sized chunk of rock and ice, it is truly insane that these objects are going

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that fast. Unfortunately, they are getting completely fried in the process,

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but it is really awesome that they are doing that.

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The comets that are flying around the sun and disappearing out of the movie

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again, they have survived past the sun. They are not getting completely

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vaporized by the intense solar radiation.

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Any comet that you see in this movie that does not have a label

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it means it was discovered by SOHO. I really love

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this mission that was designed to do something

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completely different, just by luck and by chance,

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it's completely rewritten the history books. More than

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well over half of the comets we have on official record

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now carry SOHO's name, and it was never even intended

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to do that. I just love that fact.

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beeping

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beeping

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beeping