Scientists Unravel Sun's Mysteries Using Comet Lovejoy's Tail 'Wiggles'

Comet Lovejoy made a wall of fame all of its own after successfully sailing through the Sun’s hot atmosphere in 2011, coming within 87,000 miles of its surface and emerging intact.

Now, some two years later, astronomers reveal in a study published in the journal Science how, in watching the hurtling ice ball as it grazed the Sun, they were able to discover new insights about the solar magnetic field.

Among the most significant observations, according to the report, were a series of changes Lovejoy’s tail underwent during the process. Imaged from multiple perspectives, scientists watched as it shifted direction, intensity, magnitude and persistence.

In order to better understand the reason for this, astronomers combined a state-of-the-art magnetohydrodynamic model of the solar corona and a model for the motion of emitting cometary tail ions in an embedded plasma.

In so doing, they are able to show how the “wiggles” in the tail may very well suggest that charged ions in it were somehow interacting with the local magnetic field in intricate ways.

"This bolsters the exciting prospect that coronal observations of comet flybys can offer a unique and complementary avenue toward understanding the solar atmosphere," the authors wrote. And with several fly-bys scheduled for the upcoming decade, researchers will have the chance to test this theory soon.

Meanwhile, NASA is currently at work developing the Solar Probe Plus. Set to launch in 2018, it will be tasked with “exploring what is arguably the last region of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft, the Sun’s outer atmosphere or corona as it extends out into space,” according to the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Ultimately, however, the probe will only make it within 3.7 million miles of the Sun’s surface – more than 40 times farther than Lovejoy's trajectory.