In a rare celestial spectacle near Earth's own star, two comets were seen plunging into the 
SunŐs atmosphere in close succession on June 1 and 2.The observations were made by the 
Large-Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the Solar and Heliospheric 
Observatory (SOHO).

The comets belong to a family known as the "Kreutz Sun-grazers," a class of
comets that pass through the solar atmosphere, or corona, at distances as close as 50,000 
km (30,000 miles) from the surface.  In the images taken on June 1 and 2, the
comets brighten rapidly as they approach the Sun and disappear as they are
evaporated by solar radiation.

The twin comets are named SOHO 54 and SOHO 55 as they are the 54th and 55th
comets discovered since the spacecraft was launched in 1995, according to
Dr. Donald Michels, solar physicist from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
and member of the LASCO science team.  Prior to the launch of SOHO, only 25
sun-grazers had ever been discovered.