FLIPPING FIELD: An artist’s impression of the star Tau Boo, along with its magnetic field, and the exoplanet Tau Boo b.

Image: Karen Teramura/IfA

The relationship between stars and planets is usually rather one-directional—the star rules over its celestial subjects, blasting them with radiation, blessing them with warmth. The puny planets simply take what they get. But sometimes a planet is so massive, and so close to its star, that the smaller object can exert considerable influence on its stellar neighbor.

Such is the case with the planet orbiting the star Tau Boötis—Tau Boo for short. The giant world, six times the mass of Jupiter, was discovered in 1996 circling the bright star some 50 light-years from the sun. Tau Boo b, as the planet is known, passes so close to the star in its orbit—less than one twentieth the distance between Earth and the sun—that it drags the stellar surface along with it, thereby synchronizing the rotation of the star with the orbit of the planet.

via Star Entangled with Its Giant Planet Experiences Hyperactive Magnetic Cycle: Scientific American.

Image Credit:NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Its swift motion is captured in this time-lapse movie made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013, by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the time the images were taken, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span and compresses this into just five seconds. The comet travels 34,000 miles in this brief video, or 7 percent of the distance between Earth and the moon. The deep-space visitor streaks silently against the background stars.

Unlike a firework, the comet is not combusting, but in fact is pretty cold. Its skyrocket-looking tail is really a streamer of gas and dust bleeding off the icy nucleus, which is surrounded by a bright star-like-looking coma. The pressure of the solar wind sweeps the material into a tail, like a breeze blowing a windsock.

via Comet ISON Brings Holiday Fireworks | NASA.

Image: Tsenki TV

A Russian rocket crash July 1 was likely caused by an emergency shutdown of the booster’s engines 17 seconds into the flight, according to news reports.

The unmanned Russian Proton-M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstanat 10:38 p.m. EDT (0238 GMT). The crash of the 17-story booster destroyed three onboard navigation satellites, which were worth almost $200 million. Video of the rocket crash from Russian state-run Rossiya-24 television shows the vehicle veering off course shortly after liftoff, and then breaking apart in mid-air and exploding in a fiery blaze once it hit the ground.

via Russian Rocket Crash Details Revealed: Scientific American.