A review of SOHO/UVCS observations of sungrazing comets

Abstract

In the last 10 years more than 1000 sungrazing comets have been discovered by the LASCO coronagraphs aboard SOHO the spacecraft; from this huge amount of data it has been possible to study the common origin of these comets and to explain some of the main peculiarities observed in their lightcurves. Moreover, the UV Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) aboard SOHO allowed EUV spectroscopy of sungrazers in the final stage of their trajectory (i.e. between 1.4 and 10 solar radii), but a few sungrazers have been observed with this instrument. In this paper we review the main results from the UVCS observation of sungrazers C/1996 Y1, C/2000 C6 and C/2001 C2, discussing also the first possible detection of two fragments and the determination of the pyroxene dust grain number density in the latter one. Preliminary results on the UVCS data interpretation of a sungrazer observed in 2002 (C/2002 S2) are also presented here.