Comet Leonard’s Tail Wag

Why does Comet Leonard’s tail wag? The featured time-lapse video presentations the ion tail of Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) because it modified over ten days early highest month. The video changed into taken by NASA’s Photo voltaic Terrestrial Relatives Observatory-Forward (STEREO-A) spacecraft that co-orbits the Sun at roughly the a similar distance because the Earth. Each and each image on this 29-diploma field changed into subtracted from following image to make frames that highlight differences. The video clearly presentations Comet Leonard’s long ion tail extending, wagging, and in any other case being blown around by the solar wind — a bound of instant-transferring ions that bound out from the Sun. Since the video changed into taken, Comet Leonard continued plunging toward the Sun, reached its closest arrangement to the Sun between the orbits of Mercury and Venus, survived this closest arrangement with out breaking apart, and is now fading as heads out of our Photo voltaic System. Tuesday over Zoom: APOD editor to point to the Easiest APOD Space Photos of 2021