C/2002 V1 NEAT

C/2002 V1 (NEAT)

Comet C/2002 V1 (NEAT) was discovered by chance by a robotic probe searching for near earth asteroids. Prior to perihelion it just reached naked eye brightness for northern hemisphere observers from dark sky locations.

At perihelion on the 18th February it passed just 0.1AU from the sun and put on a spectacular display viewed from SOHO. Here I've put together an animation (381Kb) of some of those SOHO images taken between the 15th and 21st of February.

	Imaged on the 20th January against the stars of Pegasus, a close-up of a 5 minute exposure onto 200ASA film taken through a 58mm f/1.2 lens operating at f/2.
	An animation of the comet's perihelion passage as observed from SOHO.