Twitter Q&A with USNRL's Space Science Division

In case you missed it, catch up with two U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) researchers who fielded questions on all things space in a Q&A session on Twitter.?

The NRL has a great team of scientists and engineers within our Space Science Division. Let’s meet the two experts who took questions and discussed our research work in space.

Dr. Robin Colaninno is an astrophysicist at NRL. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SoloHI instrument on the European Space Agency/National Aeronautics and Space Administration Solar Orbiter mission. Colaninno studies coronal mass ejections to better understand their impacts on Earth and the space environment. She is developing the next generation of coronagraphs for the NASA PUNCH mission.

Dr. Karl Battams is a computational scientist, and the Principal Investigator (PI) of the NRL LASCO coronagraph telescopes and the NASA Sungrazer Project. His research interests span from studies of the solar atmosphere, to comets and asteroids, to dust trails, and more.

Q1: What is a comet?

Colaninno: A comet is a mass of frozen gas and dust (dirty snowball) orbiting in our solar system.

Battams: Yep, that's what I was going to say. It's also a pristine chunk of the leftover parts of our solar system formation.

Q2: Can a comet's tail detach?

Battams: We have a couple of examples of comets losing their tails. Comet Encke had its gas tail ripped off by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) in 2007, and Comet Lovejoy had its entire tail vaporized by the Sun in 2011. This is comet Lovejoy in our LASCO C3 cameras. You can see its tail 'detaches' as the comet rounds the Sun, and then regrows again after.

Colaninno: Another video showing tail disconnections.

Q3: What's the difference between an astrophysicist and a computational scientist?

Colaninno: Not a lot with respect to the work we do. I have degree in Physics and Karl has a degree in Computational Science. Both from George Mason University!

Battams: Computational scientist is a broad term that applies to anyone who applies advanced computational methods to science problems. In this context though Robin is spot-on, there's very little difference. A computational scientist can work on theory (models) or actual data, or often both, but so do astrophysicists.

Q4: What's going to happen to Comet Leonard once it gets to the far side of the Sun?

Colaninno: Recede off into space = zoom out of the solar system.

Battams: If Comet Leonard survives then it will just recede off into space, and we will never see it again. But it has been extremely active, which makes me think it might be falling apart. Jan. 4 update: Comet Leonard is still reasonably healthy, and visible for people in the Southern Hemisphere.

Q5: What is a comet tail?

Battams: It's all the material - both gases and dust - released by the comet. The process is driven by sunlight, which vaporizes the frozen gases on the surface and releases the material from the comet nucleus (body). In this linked movie, the stuff we are seeing is mostly the ions (ionized gas), and we're seeing it wiggling and waving as the solar wind passes over it - kind of like a flag in a breeze.

Colaninno: Comets have two tails, one made out of dust and another made of ions.

Q6: Why is the U.S. Navy active in studying space when it's based on sea power?

Battams: Space ops are critical to the Navy in terms of navigation, communications, and more. Our NRL group studies the Sun and the way the Sun affects Earth's space environment (aka 'Space Weather'). For more info on our research work, I would point to here: Space Science (navy.mil) .

Colaninno: SoloHI was designed to observe coronal mass ejections and the solar wind. Coronal mass ejections are like hurricanes of plasma and magnetic field in space that create space weather. When space weather impacts Earth it can affect many technologies such as GPS and satellite communication.

Q7: What is a coronagraph?

Colaninno: A coronagraph is a specially designed telescope that blocks out the Sun (similar to an eclipse) that allows us to image the solar corona that is millions of time dimmer that surface of the Sun. The solar corona varies dramatically in brightness as you move further away from the Sun. That is why we have to use many different instruments to image the corona such as the LASCO coronagraphs and SoloHI heliospheric imager.

Battams: It's a telescope that creates a 'false eclipse' in space! It's designed to block the direct, blinding sunlight, and reveal the much fainter stuff (solar atmosphere, outflows, etc) nearby. Like Robin said, our coronagraphs are looking at stuff that's WAAAY fainter than the Sun - anywhere from tens to thousands of billions times fainter than the Sun.

Fun Fact: The first ever space-based discovery of a comet was made by NRL's SOLWIND coronagraph on the P78-1 satellite in 1979.

Q8: Can you describe your role in the SoloHI mission?

Battams: I'm part of the extended science team, with my role primarily to interface with the team on observations of comets, asteroids, and dust trails.

Colaninno: SoloHI is one of ten instruments on the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. As the SoloHI Principal Investigator, I lead a team of scientists, engineers and computer programmers that designed and built the SoloHI instrument and now analyze the data that is being sent down.

Q9: Tell us about your role in the LASCO and Sungrazer projects?

Battams: As principal investigator of LASCO, I help make decisions about observing plans and instrument operations. I also oversee all of the data processing and archiving. As Sungrazer PI, I oversee the entire project, looking at and confirming/rejecting reports of new comets, making comet measurements, etc.

Q10: What creates solar wind and how does it compare to wind on Earth?

Colaninno: The solar wind is similar to wind on Earth in that is can change in speed and pressure and has seasons with the 11 year solar cycle. We don't fully understand the physical processes that create the solar wind. That is something we hope to understand better with SoloHI and the rest of the Solar Orbiter mission.

Battams: The solar wind is a stream of charged particles (mostly protons and electrons) that's constantly released from the Sun's atmosphere. It's very fast - up to hundreds of miles per second - but Earth's magnetic field protects us from it. It does affect Earth's outer atmosphere though, and can create 'geomagnetic storms' that affect satellite navigation, comms, etc.

Q11: The James Webb Space Telescope just launched, what are you excited to learn from it?

Battams: I can't even imagine the kinds of amazing images that JWST will return when it looks into deep space - I'm really excited for that. But I'm also excited about the potential for studying comets - it should uncover LOTS of new science for us!

Q12: What would you say to someone considering a career in astronomy?

Battams: Do it! But be sure to understand just how much variety there is in 'astronomy'. Only a small % of astronomers sit at telescopes - most are in offices or labs, studying data/images. Some are actually building telescopes!

Colaninno: Go for it. There are so many ways that you can have a career in astronomy. You don't have to have a Ph.D. in physics. People with every background and interest can contribute to exploring space from graphic artists to computer programmers to engineers.

Q13: Can solar winds can change the movement of objects? How much time do we have when an object is redirected after fly-by from the Sun?

Battams: Solar winds do not change the movement of comets, but they do cause the ion (gas) in comet tails to wave around. They do not directly affect the trajectory of the comet at all, but other indirect factors related to the comet’s activity *can* cause very small orbit changes.

Q14: Does the activity of coronal mass ejections increase as the comet approaches and moves away from the Sun?

Battams: No, there is absolutely no known relationship between comets and CMEs, no matter how close the comet is to the Sun.

Q15: Final thoughts to end out today's Q&A?

Battams: The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory founded and has pioneered space-based studies of the Sun since the 1950's, and continues to be a leader in producing near-Sun imaging telescopes. With new telescopes like WISPR and SoloHI, and upcoming missions like CCOR and Punch, we have lots more exciting stuff yet to come!

Colaninno: SoloHI has just started science observations. Solar Orbiter will reach its first science perihelion, the point in its orbit closest to the star, on March 2022. We excited for the new science for SoloHI and Space Science at NRL.

For more information on:

Solar Orbiter (SoloHI: Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager aboard): Solar Orbiter | NASA

Sungrazer Project: Welcome to Sungrazer | Sungrazer (navy.mil)

LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment): The SOHO/LASCO Instrument Homepage (navy.mil)