The Ballad of Lovejoy - The Comet that Could

- On December 2, 2011, Astronomer Terry Lovejoy discovered a Kreutz or sungrazing comet using a ground based telescope. The comet was labeled C/2011 W3 or simply Lovejoy. It was then seen by STEREO (Behind 12/11 then Ahead 12/12) with the Heliospheric Imagers (HI1). It was reported by SOHO and NRL (Karl Battams). Karl has kept up a great running story with tons of details at . SOHO LASCO C3 starting seeing Lovejoy on 12/15. By that time there was a lot of excitement. Lovejoy was determined to be quite large for a sungrazer (10 times most) with an estimated size of 100 meters. All this indicated that this would be the brightest such comet seen from space but it was also only the second one seen from the ground. This also means that Terry Lovejoy is the first person to find a Kreutz comet from the ground and space! After SOHO, the STEREO coronagraphs started observing Lovejoy. The orbit has been plotted and since SDO had already seen a sungraz