Comet 13P / Olbers is a period of time comet that visits the inner Solar System every 69 year . It fly past its closest point to the Sun on June 30 and is now on its farseeing journey back aside . But it has come at a particular active gunpoint in the solar cycle . The Sun is presently at or around itsmaximummost fighting top and this is make sensational aurorae on Earth , robots malfunctioning on Mars , and it ’s messing with Comet Olbers ' tail .
A new pic taken by the squad at theVirtual Telescope Projecton August 8 shows the comet tail being dented , and the fault is not in itself but in our stars . Well , star . The Sun constantly free a flow of plasma – the solar wind – and that shape the fabric that evaporates from the comet into an ion tush .
During solar utmost , there are more spectacular event such as coronal mass ejections creating faster plasm but also a part of reduce plasm as the even solar wind is swept by these solar tsunamis of particles . What that have in mind for short Comet Olbers is that its tail is getting all bent out of frame .
Comet 13P/Olbers snapped on 16 January 2025, showing off its amazing, but slightly, wonky tail.Image credit: Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope Project
" The ion tail is basically caught up in that river , " Henry Hsieh , a Planetary Science Institute researcher toldMashable . “You see a straight tail most of the meter , but then every so often , you ’ll have this act of a singultus in the Sun — these coronal mass expulsion events — where it ’ll just kind of send a especially great or denser bunch of material outward . "
you may also see one-sided photos of the comet and its ion tail end take by astrophotographer Dan Bartlett available on theirAstrobin page .
Comet Olbers was first see in 1815 by Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers who found a way to count the orbit of comet . Like many comet , Comet Olbers has an associated meteor shower but not on Earth . Those meteors fall on Mars .
