Comet Hale-Bopp, Hydrogen Cloud, SWAN
SWAN (Solar Wind ANisotropies) observed a huge cloud of hydrogen, 70 times the size of the Sun, that surrounded Comet Hale-Bopp when it neared the Sun. Ultra violet light, charted by SWAN in 1997, revealed a cloud 100 million kilometers wide and diminishing in intensity outwards (contour lines). The cloud was generated by a comet nucleus perhaps only about 40 kilometers in diameter. The yellow circle (lower right) gives the size of the Sun. Solar rays broke up water vapor released from the comet by the Sun's warmth. The resulting hydrogen atoms shone by ultraviolet light invisible from the Earth's surface.
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Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: -type, /1995, 1997, 20th, activity, anisotropies, astronomical, astronomy, body, celestial, century, cloud, comet, deep, dwarf, eye, g2v, great, hale-bopp, heavenly, hydrogen, image, light, main, main-sequence, naked, o1, object, science, sequence, sky, solar, space, star, sun, swan, ultraviolet, wind, yellow
