But discovering new comets are incidental findings. SOHO's mission is to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind, the stream of highly ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System. Coronagraph images at the SOHO web site are updated every 30 minutes. You get to see the solar images at the same time that the scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency do. In fact, amateurs have discovered nearly two-thirds of the comets found in archived C2 images.
Amateurs are also in the lead for discovering new comets in real-time.
Approximately one new comet a week is discovered using the SOHO images. If you think you've found something, first review the basic criteria for a discovery before forwarding the details to scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center. By convention, comets discovered in SOHO data are named after the spacecraft rather than the astronomer. NASA has spent billions on this project and there is not even one dime set aside for a stinkin' T-shirt. This contest is not closed to web masters or their families.