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Comet McNaught -- A First Light Present for STEREO (Forwarded)



 
 
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Old January 17th 07, 04:23 AM posted to sci.astro
Andrew Yee
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Default Comet McNaught -- A First Light Present for STEREO (Forwarded)

Rani Gran
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. January 12, 2007

Comet McNaught -- A First Light Present for STEREO

This image
[http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1...naught_lg.jpg] of
Comet McNaught comes from the Heliospheric Imager on one of the STEREO
spacecraft, taken Jan. 11, 2007. To the right is the comet nucleus, so
bright it saturates the detector creating a bright vertical band in the
image. The comet's dynamic tails extend up and to the left.

The lowest of the tails is the ion tail, which points along the direction
of the solar wind. Above that is the comet's dust tail pushed out by
radiation pressure from the sun. The tail is highly structured, probably
the result of dynamic activity in the comet itself.

Although the two STEREO observatories have been turning on their
instruments since mid-December, the Heliospheric Imagers on this
spacecraft turned on for the first time on Jan. 11 -- just in time to see
the spectacular Comet McNaught.

The Heliospheric Imagers are designed to observe the space between the Sun
and the Earth in order to watch solar storms as they head our way. But
here the Heliospheric Imagers are also able to observe Comet McNaught as
it heads towards the sun.

STEREO's SECCHI/HI instrument was built by a consortium led by the Naval
Research Laboratory (USA), and includes the University of Birmingham (UK),
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) and Centre Spatiale de Liege
(Belgium).

Image credit: NASA


 




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