Solar physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have tracked a comet through the low solar atmosphere, deeper into the sun than ever before, before it presumably evaporated in the 100,000-degree heat.
Using instruments aboard NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft, four post-doctoral fellows at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory were able to track the comet as it approached the sun and estimate an approximate time and place of impact. STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory), launched in 2006, consists of identical spacecraft orbiting the sun, one ahead of Earth and one behind Earth, providing a stereo view of the sun.
The researchers then looked at data from the ground-based Mauna Loa Solar Observatory in Hawaii, and found images in the predicted spot of what appears to be a comet approaching the edge of the sun from behind the solar disk.
"We believe this is the first time a comet has been tracked in 3-D space this low down in the solar corona," said Claire Raftery, a post-doctoral fellow newly arrived at UC Berkeley from Dublin's Trinity College.
This video shows the comet and its tail as observed by NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft between March 12 and 14, 2010. The left side is STEREO B (orbiting behind the Earth) and the right is STEREO A (ahead). The outer images are from Cor2, the middle ones are from Cor1 and the inner ones of the solar disk are from the EUVI instruments onboard STEREO.
source: NASA, UC Berkeley
credit: [ Ссылка ]
