New research by four U. California-Berkeley scientists reveals that a comet came startlingly close to the fiery surface of the sun, possibly expanding our knowledge of Earth’s nearest star.
The findings of Claire Raftery, Juan Carlos Martinez-Oliveros, Pascal Saint-Hilaire and Samuel Krucker – four researchers at the campus Space Sciences Laboratory – were presented Monday at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami.
The comet traveled far down into the sun’s chromosphere and reached approximately 2,000 kilometers above the visible surface of the sun. This is much closer to the surface than scientists are usually able to track comets, Saint-Hilaire said.
Once the comet reached this point, what most likely happened is the ice, water and other volatile components of the comet completely evaporated and the sun’s tidal forces deformed what remained of the comet, ripping it apart, according to Saint-Hilaire.
While sun-grazing comets are not rare, Saint-Hilaire said the most significant aspect of this incident was how deep the comet traveled into the sun’s atmosphere.
The comet comes from the Kreutz family of sun-grazing comets and was likely a fragment of a larger comet that disintegrated into smaller pieces between 100 to 200 years ago.
The group’s research is still in its early stages, according to Saint-Hilaire, and the group has not been able to fully explore and analyze the data.
“It is in the nature of astronomy to use new or unusual events and to try to extract as much information out of them as possible,” he said in an e-mail. “This process can be very time-consuming (and) that’s why it is still early to gauge the scientific impact of this event.”
While the group does not yet know exactly what they will use their research for, the implications of their data are promising, Saint-Hilaire said. He added that possible uses for the data include improving theories on radio emission and particle acceleration mechanisms of the solar corona.
“A better understanding of what goes on in our nearest star can lead us to a better understanding of what goes on in other stars, or how our sun affects us here on Earth,” he said in an e-mail.
Using data gathered from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory – a 2006 NASA mission that launched two spacecraft into Earth-like orbits to image and triangulate interplanetary disturbances – the group tracked the comet for 20 hours and used this data to predict the trajectory of the comet and pinpoint its location.
“I think the comet tracking work is very cool,” said Stuart Bale, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and the director of the Space Sciences Laboratory who has been involved with the mission for his own research. “It’s exciting to see that the path of the comet can be calculated using the STEREO images.”