Ulysses's encounter with comet Hyakutake

Details Ulysses's encounter with comet Hyakutake Ulysses's encounter with comet Hyakutake

Nov 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002esasp.500..563j&link_type=abstract

In: Proceedings of Asteroids, Comets, Meteors - ACM 2002. International Conference, 29 July - 2 August 2002, Berlin, Germany. Ed

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Comets: Space Missions

Scientific paper

On May 1, 1996, the Ulysses spacecraft crossed the ion tail of comet C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) at 3.73 AU from the Sun. This unplanned encounter went unrecognized for over four years. The first tail signature noticed, but not interpreted as such, was a dramatic solar wind proton number density drop. Investigation of magnetic field signatures indicated the presence of an ion tail, and that it belonged to Hyakutake. Around the time that the source was established, pick-up ions' signatures were coincidentally found in ion composition data. Hyakutake was the fourth comet to be encountered, the most productive comet encountered, and the first encountered in fast solar wind. The encounter was with material formed over a week earlier at 0.35 AU from the Sun and carried 3.38 AU anti-sunward by the solar wind. Hyakutake's motion during that week implies a tail length >3.8 AU. These unique far-downtail data complement the near-nucleus data obtained by other missions.

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