The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, has so far not found anything looking to hit Earth and destroy life, a fact I am grateful for. It has, however, found a lot of comets. One of these Comet ATLASes, the comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), promised us a great celestial show, and then fell apart instead. Literally. The main body of the comet, which appears as the round head from which the tail expands back, shattered, and the debris was left as an orbiting mess; a mess that just happened to orbit right into the path of ESA’s Solar Orbiter. 

The instruments on this mission allowed researchers to determine that cometary fragments reshape the Sun’s magnetic field. Essentially, the magnetic field drapes itself around the fragments, helping to shape the comet’s ion tails. Project lead, Lorenzo Matteini explains: This is quite a unique event and an exciting opportunity for us to study the makeup and structure of comet tails in unprecedented detail. Hopefully, with the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter now orbiting the Sun closer than ever before, these events may become much more common in [the] future!

Yes, folks, he is hoping for more comets to self-destruct in the inner solar system and get close to solar probes. Science is weird. It is also wonderful.

More Information

NAM 2021 press release