The comet was discovered in 1999 and has a fire-and-ice elliptical 4-year path around the Sun. It would feel like staring down a blast furnace if you stood on the comet and held up both hands.
That will leave something out of you. It was a couple of chunks larger than houses.
The comet was found in images taken by the NASA/ESA solar mission. When it is very close to the Sun, it shows activity due to dust being ejected as it warms up. It doesn't have a lot of ice. If not, it would have a tail by the time it crossed the path of the Red Planet.
Astronomers were prepared for it when it swung around the Sun again in 2021. They were able to see it with the huge telescope just a few weeks before perihelion. It was only a little bit closer to the Sun than Earth was, and there was no sign of activity.
Astronomers had to wait for perihelion to put the Sun behind it before they could point more telescopes at it. They used several large telescopes in February and March to take a look at the stars.
It didn't look the same.
When a comet falls apart it can become a cloud of rubble and debris because it is very fragile.
Two pieces had broken off and were 40 meters apart. The nucleus of the comet is less than 200 meters wide, so these were significant chunks.
The comet is unlikely to have any water ice left in its interior because it is so hot. It fell apart.
The comet gets brighter and dimmer on a very short time scale, probably only a half hour. Its rotation is likely to be the reason for that. If it is long, we can see its broad side and narrow end as it spins. So many small solar system bodies are potato-shaped because of the amount of change in brightness.
That's odd. A half-hour rotation would make it the fastest comet known and it would have to have a high strength to keep it from flying apart. There is a possibility that the forces of sunlight spun it up.
It broke up in 2021. Huge cracks in the rocky body would likely be caused by thermal expansion and contraction as the temperature goes up and down as it approaches the Sun. A couple of big cracks must have formed when it got close to the Sun, and the fast spin pulled the trigger on a decent rock slide. The comet's mass was torn away.
The comet's color changed after perihelion. After passing the Sun, the nucleus reflected more red than green light, but it didn't change much. You would expect the tail to be red and the dust to get less red. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before, and I don't know why it behaved this way.
It will be back this way in early 2025, so there will be more chances to see it. There won't be a lot of chances. The gravity of the planet is making it more elliptical and dropping it closer to the sun. It will most likely collide with the Sun in a couple of thousand years if it doesn't break before then.
Spectacular comets are ephemeral. They are active and lose material as they heat up. They can only do that for so long before they fall apart or die. Take the chance when you can see a comet. Maybe it won't be back for a while or maybe it won't be back at all.
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