Comet Shines Light on Sun Dynamics
4:51 minutes
In 2011, comet Lovejoy traveled through the sun’s corona and lived to tell the tale. But its tail was the most telling. Reporting in the journal Science, Cooper Downs, an astrophysicist at Predictive Science Inc., says that the wiggly path of the comet’s tail helps explain the sun’s magnetic field.
Flora Lichtman is host of the podcast Every Little Thing. She’s a former Science Friday multimedia producer.
Flora Lichtman is host of the podcast Every Little Thing. She’s a former Science Friday multimedia producer.