Lovejoy survives close encounter with sol

[marchesarosa]

Comet Lovejoy was only discovered a couple of weeks ago. It was supposed to melt as it came so close to the sun that the temperatures would hit several million degrees...




The comet came within 75,000 miles of the sun. For a small object often described as a dirty snowball, that brush with the sun should have been fatal.
Astronomers say it probably wasn't deadly because the comet was larger than they thought...

www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-comet-defies-death-sun.html

[skeptic]

Far from being "a dirty snowball" it sounds like the comet was rock and "hard metals" like tungsten to survive such an encounter. Maybe it's own gravity (though small) and personal momentum held it together even though it may for a time have been in a molten state?

Was a spectrum taken of it when close to the sun?