The Catalina Sky Survey's Astronomer Gregory Leonard was the first to spot the comet a year before its perihelion. Leonard's undoing was the close approach to the Sun, as all signs point to the demise of this dirty snowball.
The nucleus and coma of the comet are missing because it is moving away from the Sun.
Leonard was within 56 million miles of the Sun at perihelion. Earth is within 91 million miles of the star. Leonard was brought to life by the warmth of the Sun, but the comet's journey through the inner solar system turned out to be its undoing.
Leonard was studied using the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A (STEREO-A), operated by NASA, and Solar Orbiter, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. No two comets are the same, and they are virtually impossible to predict.
The comet was not far away from Jupiter when Gregory Leonard first observed it. As it got closer, there was speculation that it might become visible to the untrained eye, but this was not the case, as the comet could only be seen with telescopes and binoculars. Leonard was at risk of disintegrating, like any comet cruising for a solar flyby. The comet, which had just barely started its journey to the outer solar system, seems to have stopped.
Around the time of its perihelion, the comet began to show signs of doom. There were fluctuations in its brightness every three to five days and a possible signal that chunks were falling off the nucleus, according to EarthSky. Leonard, which could only be seen in the southern hemisphere, had become a fading streak in space. Mašek did remote observations from an observatory.
The most likely scenario is that the nucleus fell apart. Leonard will go down as the greatest comet of all time. It is sad to lose a fellow traveler, but comets do appear in the sky. The next one is going to be visible to the naked eye.
The comet is 85 miles wide.
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