The Kreutz Sungrazers (i/ˈkrɔɪts/) are a family of sungrazing comets, characterized by orbits taking them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. They are believed to be fragments of one large comet that broke up several centuries ago and are named for German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first demonstrated that they were related.
Several members of the Kreutz family have become Great Comets, occasionally visible near the Sun in the daytime sky. The most recent of these was Comet Ikeya–Seki in 1965, which may have been one of the brightest comets in the last millennium. It has been suggested that another cluster of bright Kreutz system comets may begin to arrive in the inner Solar System in the next few years to decades.
Many hundreds of smaller members of the family, some only a few meters across, have been discovered since the launch of the SOHO satellite in 1995. None of these smaller comets has survived its perihelion passage. Larger sungrazers such as the Great Comet of 1843 and C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) have survived their perihelion passage. Amateur astronomers have been successful at discovering Kreutz comets in the data available in real time via the Internet.
Read more about Kreutz Sungrazers: Discovery and Historical Observations, Notable Members, Dynamical History and Evolution, Recent Observations, Future