Comet's Dramatic Dive Into Our Sun

A space telescope has caught a giant comet's extraordinary final hours as it made a dive of death into the sun.

The cosmic missile, with a head the size of the Isle of Wight and a tail many millions of miles long, appeared in pictures being taken by a NASA satellite on Friday (12th).

The orbiting SoHo observatory, which continually monitors the sun, recorded the rare and previously unspotted brilliant comet swooping in from the lower left of its pictures.

It grew ever brighter as it aimed directly at our home star, shown as a white ring in the images. It was immediately vaporized by the sun's powerful nuclear furnace.