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A rare green comet passing through our solar system for the first time in 50,000 years received a warm welcome from the sun this week... perhaps too warm.
Images captured by Michael Jager, an amateur astronomer based in Austria, reveal a huge spike of gas disconnecting from the comet's tail and drifting off on the solar wind. This impromptu tail reduction was almost certainly caused by an explosion of super-charged solar particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME), according to Spaceweather.com.
CME are huge plasma particles that move quickly and can explode on the surface of the sun at over 36 million degrees Fahrenheit (20 million degrees Celsius). These blobs are commonly released when there are a lot of sunspots — large, dark-looking regions that form in the sun’s lower atmosphere — as there are now. Sunspots and cmes appear more often as the sun approaches the top of its 11-year activity cycle, currently set for 2025.
When a CME passes directly over Earth, it can damage satellites, trigger auroras and cause widespread electrical disturbances. And when a centimetre passes over a nearby comet, the solar particles that move quickly can pinch the tail of that comet and send it down. NASA witnessed the phenomenon, known as a disconnection event, in 2007, when the STEREO A spacecraft captured this awesome footage.
Several cmes have sprung from the sun this week, and it seems probable that one of them cut off the tail of the green comet, according to spaceweather.com. That's bad timing for the comet, which had spent the previous 50,000 years outside our solar system before making a close approach to the sun on Jan. 12.
Fortunately, the tail of a comet is made mainly of gas, which flows from the icy body of the comet while the ultraviolet sunlight passes over it. So the sun is going to help quickly replace the same tail it cut off as the comet continues to drag around the inner solar system.
Astronomers will soon have their best chance of seeing the comet, referred to as c/2022 e3 (ztf). The comet will make its closest approach to the ground in February. 1, going approximately 26 million miles (42 million km) from our planet. Viewers in non-light-polluted areas may be able to see the comet without a telescope or binoculars.
But the comet will not stay long: soon after having left the sky of the Earth, the comet will again zoom out of our solar system, probably never to return.
