Arkadiusz Kubczak, an amateur comet-hunter from Poland, recently discovered his third comet in images taken by SOHO. His latest discovery is interesting because it is classed as a Kreutz or sungrazing comet. These are comets that pass within around 146 thousand kilometres of the Sun � that�s a mere 0.01 per cent of the average Earth-Sun distance. This comet is particularly special as it marks the 1000th Kreutz comet to be found using data from the SOHO spacecraft.

When SOHO was launched in 1995, only around 30 Kreutz comets were known. Scientists think that these 1000-or-so fleeting comets were once part of a much larger comet, observed by Aristotle and Ephorus in around 371 BCE. The comet has since broken into fragments � so now many sungrazing comets can be seen.

This comet, officially designated C/2006 P7 (SOHO), was the 1185th to be discovered using data from the SOHO LASCO and SWAN instruments.

SOHO (the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) is a NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft designed to monitor the Sun, but can also be used to spot nearby comets, as the instruments block out the Sun�s glare. The LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) and SWAN (Solar Wind Anisotropies) instruments were used to find the Kreutz comets, making SOHO the most successful comet-hunter ever.