Researchers have discovered a record-breaking comet using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, with a tail that stretched more than seven times the distance between Earth and the sun. Researchers from the University College London examined the data from the mission in 2002 when Cassini was on its way from Jupiter to Saturn. This comet moved approximately adjacent to the Sun-Cassini line during that period, enabling pickup ions to be carried to Cassini by the solar wind. The suggested total tail length of >7.5 astronomical unit makes this cometary ion tail the longest yet measured.
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