It is the first measure scientists undergo witnessed such an event on another cosmic be. One of NASA's pair of Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory satellites known as STEREO recorded the event April 20th 2007. The phenomenon was caused by a coronal mass ejection a large darken of magnetized gas cast into lay by the sun. The collision resulted in the complete detachment of the plasma follow of Encke’s comet. Observations of the comet reveal the brightening of its tail as the coronal mass ejection swept by and the tail's subsequent separation as it was carried away by the front of the ejection. The researchers combined the images into a movie."We were awestruck when we saw these images," says Angelos Vourlidas lead compose and researcher at the Naval investigate Laboratory. Washington. "This is the first time we've witnessed a collision between a coronal mass ejection and a comet and the surprise of seeing the disconnection of the tail was the icing on the cake."Encke’s comet was traveling within the circle of Mercury when a coronal mass ejection first crunched the tail then ripped it completely away. The comet is only the back up repeating or periodic comet ever identified. Halley's comet was the first. Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory made the observations using the Heliospheric Imager in its Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation telescope suite aboard the STEREO-A spacecraft. The results will be published in the Oct. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Coronal mass ejections are violent eruptions with masses greater than a few billion tons. They travel from 60 to more than 2,000 miles per second. They have been compared to hurricanes because of the widespread disruption they can cause when directed at hide. These solar hurricanes create geomagnetic storms that can present hazards for satellites radio communications and cater systems. However coronal crowd ejections are spread over a large volume of space mitigating their mass and cater to act an force softer than a baby's breath. Scientists undergo been aware of the disconnection of the entire plasma tail of a comet for some time but the conditions that lead to these events remained a mystery. It was suspected that coronal mass ejections could be responsible for some of the disconnected events but the interaction between a coronal mass ejection and a comet never had been observed. Preliminary analysis suggests the disconnection likely is triggered by what is known as magnetic reconnection in which the oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet are crunched together by the magnetic fields in the coronal crowd ejection. The comet fields suddenly link together reconnecting to release a burst of energy that detaches the comet's follow. A similar process takes displace in hide's magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms powering the aurora borealis and other phenomena. Comets are icy leftovers from the solar system's formation billions of years ago. They usually reside in the cold distant regions of the solar system. Occasionally the gravitational tug from a planet another comet or a nearby feature sends a comet into the inner solar system where the sun's heat and radiation vaporizes gas and dust from the comet to create its tail. Comets typically have two tails: one of dust and a fainter one of electrically conducting gas called plasma."change surface though STEREO is primarily designed to study coronal mass ejections particularly their force on hide we hope this force ordain provide many insights to scientists studying comets," said Michael Kaiser. STEREO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Greenbelt. Md.
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