by postmarc » Tue May 23, 2006 4:05 pm
Concerning today's movie of the large fragment of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 as it passed the Earth, I always thought that the direction of a comet's tail was determined by solar winds. In today's movie the tail was directly behind the path of the comet. Is it just a chance that SW3 was heading directly toward the sun? Or did it just appear that way from a vantage point on Earth. I wonder if Hubble or any of the other space platforms got a look at SW3.
Concerning today's movie of the large fragment of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 as it passed the Earth, I always thought that the direction of a comet's tail was determined by solar winds. In today's movie the tail was directly behind the path of the comet. Is it just a chance that SW3 was heading directly toward the sun? Or did it just appear that way from a vantage point on Earth. I wonder if Hubble or any of the other space platforms got a look at SW3.