Amateur scientists pass 2,000-comet SOHO milestone

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been used by budding scientists all over the world to identify 2,000 comets.

With two new transitory bodies identified in the SOHO data on December 26th, the milestone was reached and the array's status as the most prolific comet-finder on record was confirmed.

The honours of finding comets 1,999 and 2,000 went to Polish astronomy student Michal Kusiak, who has identified over 100 of the comets spotted by SOHO since November 2007.

US project scientist for SOHO at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Joe Gurman notes the impact the observatory has had on comet statistics - despite originally being intended to study the sun.

"Since it launched on December 2nd, 1995, to observe the sun, SOHO has more than doubled the number of comets for which orbits have been determined over the last 300 years," he says.

Unlike asteroids, comets are made of ice and typically have two tails, one dust trail left behind them in their orbit and one plume of gas leading directly away from the sun.