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A comet whose distance from the Sun at perihelion passage is so small that it passes through the Sun's outer layers. Around a dozen long-period comets, which have other orbital characteristics in common as well as the small perihelion distance, form a well-established group of sungrazers. They are also known as the Kreutz group after the Dutch astronomer Heinrich Kreutz (1854-1907) who, in 1888, was among the first to note the similarity between the orbits of some of the brightest comets ever observed.
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