Comet Lovejoy enters the solar atmosphere. This movie was recorded by an extreme UV telescope on the Solar Dynamics Observatory

Researchers are pondering a mystery: What made the comet's tail wiggle so wildly in transit through the sun's atmosphere? The effect is clear in this sequence of extreme UV images recorded by NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft. "Why the wiggles?" wonders Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab. "We're not sure. There might be some kind of helical motion going on. Perhaps we're seeing material in the tail magnetically 'clinging' to coronal loops and moving with them. [Coronal loops are huge loops of magnetism that emerge from the sun's surface and thread the sun's atmosphere.] There are other possibilities too, and we will certainly investigate those!"

Comet Lovejoy exits the solar atmosphere. This movie was recorded by an extreme UV telescope on the Solar Dynamics Observatory

Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) recorded these views of Comet Lovejoy as it approached the sun early on 16 December 2011. Using these images, scientists believe the coma -- the visible cloud of ice and dust surrounding the comet -- is about 450 miles across. Since the comet is so much fainter than the sun, the SOT's original image showed a saturated, over bright sun next to the comet; this image has been processed with a less bright image of the sun that was captured simultaneously. Credit: JAXA/Hinode/LMSAL

This coronagraph movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory shows Comet Lovejoy receding from the sun after its close encounter. The horizontal lines through the comet's nucleus are digital artifacts caused by saturation of the detector; Lovejoy was that bright!

Europe's Proba2 microsatellite recorded Comet Lovejoy's entrance and exit from the sun. The darkening in the middle of the movie is a solar eclipse: "Proba2's orbit briefly carried it behind the earth with respect to the sun," explains Dan Seaton of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. "The timing of the eclipse was perfect. It happened while the comet was out of sight behind the sun."