A comet got vaporized by the sun and a spacecraft watched it happen

A comet speeding at a blistering 1.3 million miles per hour through our solar system met its end this week when it flew too close to the sun.

The comet was spotted on August 1 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft as the cosmic ball of ice and dust was hurtling toward the sun.

While the gif of the comet's death plunge appears to show it falling into the sun, that's not the full story.

The comet didn't quite run headlong into the star. Instead, it got "vaporized" by the sun's extreme environment as it whipped around it, NASA said.

Via Giphy

Scientists think that this comet was part of the "Kreutz family of comets," meaning that it was part of "a group of comets with related orbits that broke off of a huge comet several centuries ago," NASA said in a statement.

SOHO is one of several spacecraft that keep an eye on the sun.

Along with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and others, the sun-staring fleet gives scientists a good idea of the goings on of our nearest star and any object unlucky enough to get too close to it.

NASA is now planning another solar mission that will bring a spacecraft -- named the Solar Probe Plus -- into the sun's upper atmosphere, allowing scientists to learn more about how the solar wind streams from the star. If all stays on track, the spacecraft should launch in 2018.