Researchers have confirmed that the comet that sailed by Mars last month created thousands of shooting stars per hour and a new layer of ionized particles high in the planet's atmosphere.
At twilight, the Martian skies probably took a yellowish hue from sodium in vaporized comet dust, which created a glow similar to sodium vapor lights used in parking lots found on Earth.
"To see (that) many shooting stars happening at once, I think it would have been really mind-blowing," planetary scientist Nick Schneider, with the University of Colorado in Boulder, told reporters on a conference call, according to Reuters.
By using a fleet of robotic spacecraft circling Mars, scientists were able to study Comet Siding Spring, which passed just 87,000 miles by Mars on Oct. 19.
In comparison, that was less than half the distance between Earth and the moon, and 10 times closer than any known comet that has passed by our planet.
The comet was a visitor from the Oort Cloud, a spherically shaped reservoir found beyond Neptune's orbit containing leftovers from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
Comet Siding Spring "probably has never been in to the inner solar system before," said Jim Green, head of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington.
The comet definitely left an imprint on Mars, by depositing thousands of pounds of dust into the atmosphere, which is a lot more than computer models had predicted.
NASA had moved its orbiting spacecraft so they would be behind Mars and shielded from dust impacts during the storm.
"I really believe that hiding them like that really saved them," Green said. "We ended up with a lot more dust than we ever anticipated."
Measurements taken before and after Siding Spring's approach show substantial changes in Mars' upper atmosphere, like the addition of a new layer of charged particles and chemical fingerprints of magnesium, iron and other metals "shed" by the passing comet, according to Reuters.
Scientists are still looking to determine the comet's size, composition and other attributes, according to Reuters.
The comet is named after the Australian observatory that discovered it in 2013.
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