European Space Agency (ESA) experts reported that Hanji Tan, an amateur astronomer from Prague who recently participated in the Sungrazer project, which examined the data obtained by the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) observatory, discovered the 5,000th sun.

Jubilee comet SOHO belongs to the Marsden group, named after British astronomer Brian Marsden. This is believed to be debris ejected by the much larger comet 96P/McHoltz, which approaches the Sun every 5.3 years.

However, the jubilee comet discovered by Tan, like the vast majority of comets around the sun, did not survive the encounter with the star and was destroyed by its radiation.

The spacecraft for observing the Sun – the SOHO observatory – has been operating at the L1 Lagrangian point of the Earth-Sun system since May 1996. It collects data on our star’s activity, the state of its atmosphere, and measures the properties of the solar wind.