List of Kreutz sungrazers

The Kreutz sungrazers are a group of comets descended from the breakup of a comet in about 371 BC.^[1] They are typically traveling less than 2 solar radii from the Sun. Because they travel so close, they often burn up. Many bright comets are members of the group, including Comet Ikeya–Seki, which broke in 3 pieces in its 1965 perihelion. The Kreutz sungrazers can be subdivided into several groups- a primary group at inclination ~144° and node ~5, and a secondary, smaller group at inclination ~139° node ~350°. The entire group spans several degrees across in their orbits, and make up a significant portion of the known comets in the Solar System — as of November 2015, about 3000 of the 4000 known comets belong to the Kreutz sungrazers group. Many of these short arc comets are assumed to have an orbital eccentricity of 1.0 because their long-term orbits are poorly constrained.

Some of the brightest known Kreutz comets since 1843
(Counter-clockwise direction from top):

• C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)
• C/1963 R1 (Pereyra)
• C/1843 D1 (Great comet)
• C/1882 R1 (Great comet)
• C/1965 S1 (Ikeya–Seki)

Kreutz comets discovered through the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) also have their numerical designations included in the list, whether or not they received official designations from the Minor Planet Center.^[2] Members that have been observed from the ground and those bright enough to be considered as great comets were also color coded, to further distinguish them from smaller ones only observed by satellites in space.