Comets dying isn’t unusual but this week, scientists captured the moment one passed through our solar system and got well and truly destroyed by the sun.

The comet that was traveling at 1.3 million miles an hour when it passed too close to the sun, was captured by scientists at ESA and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) as it spectacularly met its end. But the image doesn’t show the whole story – while it looks like it aimed straight into the sun, it was actually shown to vaporize as it circles the sun’s intense, burning atmosphere.

The comet is thought to belong to a family of comets called Kreutz which are a group of comets that broke away from one huge comet several centuries ago according to The Daily Mail.

The SOHO is one of a group of spacecraft that primarily observe the sun and the activity that happens around it and was able to capture the unlucky comet or any other object that gets dangerously close to the star and meets its fate.

According to Mashable, NASA are planning a solar mission aiming to launch in 2018 where the spacecraft named Solar Probe Plus will orbit the sun’s upper atmosphere in order to learn more about solar winds and how they behave around the star.

You can watch a GIF of the destruction of the Kreutz comet via GIPHY.