SOHO’s unique view of a comet that fell to pieces   The hydrogen cloud around Comet LINEAR as observed by the SWAN instrument on SOHO on 26 June 2000, almost a month before the comet disintegrated. The field of view is 21 million kilometres wide. Credit: SOHO/SWAN (ESA & NASA) & J.T.T. Mäkinen et al.   Fragments of Comet LINEAR seen as mini-comets by the Hubble Space Telescope on 5 August 2000. Part of a dust tail is visible at top right. Credit: HST/WFPC2 (NASA & ESA) & H.A. Weaver et al. Release date: 2 July 2002