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Karl Battams
@SungrazerComets
Computational science Dr. @ USNRL. PI of SOHO/LASCO & Sungrazer Project. Comets, asteroids, Sun & more. Personal (legacy verified) account; all opinions mine.
Washington, D.C.sungrazer.nrl.navy.milJoined March 2010

Karl Battams’s Tweets

Common misconception: "all of the white streaks are cosmic rays". They're not! They're actually tiny dust ejecta particles caused by dust grains slamming into (primarily) the spacecraft heat shield and releasing little puffs of material. Space is surprisingly dusty!
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Note also that the "Sun" image uses actual NASA/SDO images of the magnetic features of the solar disk as seen from PSP's viewpoint. The size, location, and rotation of that Sun graphic are their actual values as seen by PSP.
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So excited that this result is finally published! Huge Kudos to for his work here! He has long had a theory that Phaethon's activity was not "dusty", and now he has all but proven it with a novel use of our LASCO! ☀️🛰️☄️
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☄️ @MissionSoho observatory has overturned 14 years of thinking about the strange Sun-skirting ‘rock comet’ known as Phaethon that could reopen the mystery of how the Geminid meteor shower was born 💫 Full story👉esa.int/Science_Explor
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Sequence of images, taken by SOHO’s LASCO coronagraph, depicting the asteroid Phaethon at perihelion during different orbits around the Sun. The glowing asteroid is enveloped by a cloud and followed by a small tail which shines brightly in the orange filter of LASCO
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Ten thousand. TEN THOUSAND!! That's how many mission days the remarkable, irreplaceable, extraordinary / SOHO spacecraft has been operating! 😱🥳🛰️☀️ Such an amazing milestone! Here's to 10,000 more, ! 🍻
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Today is day 10,000 of ESA and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission! SOHO studies the Sun inside and out, from its internal structure, to the extensive outer atmosphere, to the solar wind that it blows across the solar system. Let's review SOHO's last 10,000 days ⬇️
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The SOHO mission, consisting of instruments and large panels from either side, against the backdrop of space and the Sun
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Jupiter is currently crossing the field of view of our LASCO C2 camera on / SOHO. ☀️🛰️ If you look closely, you can just about see its moon 🌑Callisto peeking out from beneath the saturation spike! The other moons are too close to Jupiter to see, atm.
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This one was quite amazing. It erupted on the far side, approximately towards Parker Solar Probe, but still produced a quickly increasing solar energetic particle event at SOHO (and Earth) — probably due to a circumsolar shock wave produced by the eruption.
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Note that the Sun -- that vast plasma ball that encapsulates ~99% of the mass of our entire solar system -- is the size of that little white circle in the middle, and is dwarfed in size in by the expanding CME front in mere minutes. 😳 CMEs are seriously impressive! ☀️
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Big ol' "halo" coronal mass ejection (CME) seen in the // SOHO/LASCO C3 data earlier today! 😍☀️ It erupted on the far side of the Sun, so not Earth directed. The planet in the field of view is Mercury. (Neptune is in there somewhere too but too faint to see)
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On 9 March 2023, there was a big CME. Especially the linear structure on the east side (left) was amazing to me, perhaps a shock wave. I did not find disk signatures that would have accounted for this CME. So yes, I conclude this was a far side event, perhaps glancing PSP.
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Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) last night. It's fading fast as it heads away from the Sun and Earth. A single exposure of 600 seconds. 2022-02-16 1 x 600" ASI294 MC/ED120. Ma Ma Creek, Australia.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), 2022-02-16, Ma Ma Creek, Australia.
The comet is fading fast as it head out of the solar system.
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Notice how comet tails don't actually flow 'behind' the comet, instead, they trail away from the Sun. It was this observation that lead to the discovery of the #SolarWind!☀️🌬️☄️ (More info in our article on #CometZDF 👉esa.int/Space_Safety/P)
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On this day twenty (!!) years ago, comet "C/2002 V1 (NEAT)" entered the field of view of the @ESA/@NASASun/@USNRL SOHO/LASCO C3 camera. A couple of days later (Feb 18) its tail took a glancing blow from a coronal mass ejection! ☀️☄️🛰️
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Wow! This perhaps isn't the "prettiest" comet image you'll ever see but trust me when I say that imaging 96P just a few days after perihelion, at such small elongation, is truly impressive!
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96P/Machholz at 14,7° elongation with long tail > 1° 2023-02-05 5.09 UT 4x20sec filter red 11 RASA QHY600 AZM/Michael Jäger, Austria
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Much Kudos to for his work on first detecting the trail, and coming up with a great observing plan for LASCO. Also big thanks should always go the SOHO/LASCO Ops folks - Kevin Schenk and James Tabourne - who have to schedule these convoluted observing plans for us 👏👏
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