Comet Lovejoy's trip into our sun 1 1/2 years ago not only helped it earn title of "The Great Christmas Comet of 2011," it has revealed secrets about the sun's magnetic field itself, according to a new study.
The comet's path brought it into the solar corona, a plasma atmosphere surrounding the sun with temperatures soaring into the millions of degrees. While the comet survived the trip by the sun, it soon disintegrated two days later.
"The comet goes through an area of the solar atmosphere that we can't really observe," said Dr. Karel Schrijver, from the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Calif., in a BBC report.
"We can't go there because our satellites would melt, and we can't see it because there is not much light coming from it. But comet Lovejoy gave us a means to access a part of the solar atmosphere and solar magnetic field that we cannot get into in any other way."
As the comet entered the corona and temperatures began to rise, the comet's tail started whipping back and forth. Further examination using NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and its twin STEREO spacecraft revealed that this was the result of interaction with the sun's magnetic field.
"The tail is not following the comet's head perfectly as we would expect it to follow... It's tail gets locked onto the Sun's magnetic field, and gets flicked back and forth," Dr. Schrijver explained.
Understanding the sun's magnetic field gives scientists more insight into other solar phenomena such as solar storms and coronal mass ejections, both of which, if strong enough and in the right direction, can affect electronics systems here on Earth.
NASA plans to launch the Solar Probe Plus in 2018. Solar Probe Plus will come within 3.7 million miles of the sun, the closest any spacecraft has ever come to the sun, but still 40 times the distance Lovejoy passed our parent star at. Scientists are also standing by to study Comet ISON, another sun-grazing comet that will pass by Earth by the end of 2013.
You can read the full published study in the journal Science.
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