Disturbances of both cometary and Earth's magnetospheres excited by single solar flares

Abstract

In the solar wind a comet plays the role of a windvane that moves three-dimensionally in the heliomagnetosphere. Among the solar systems bodies, only comets have a wide range of inclination angles of their orbital planes to the ecliptic plane ranging from 0 to 90 deg. Therefore, observations of cometary plasma tails are useful in probing the heliomagnetospheric conditions in the high heliolatitudinal region. A comet can be compared to a polar-orbiting probe encircling the Sun. We will introduce two rare cases in which the magnetospheres of both the comet and the Earth are disturbed by a single solar flare