 Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast. Today's picture for April 8th of 2024 is titled The Changing Ion Tale of Comet Ponds Brooks. So what do we see here? Well here we see multiple images of the comet known as Ponds Brooks. And we can see that it's all been arranged so that we're looking at them as though the comet is heading in the same direction. So we see the head of the comet pointing to the left and the tail stretching away to the right. Now this is taken not over a long period of time. In fact, it's just over a period of nine days from March 6th at the top to March 14th at the bottom. And we can see that even from day to day there are significant changes in the Ion Tale of the comet. Now the tail of the comet is formed by the sun. The sun heats up the nucleus of the comet which is invisible here. It's much too small to be seen at this scale. But when it does heat that up it vaporizes the icy material from the surface and pushes some of it back. So depending on how much material is being vaporized and heated and expelled from the comet tells us something about what the tail will look like. So when we see some of these images like the third one down and even the very bottom one the tail is very quiet. There's very little material there that was being expelled at that time. Others such as the top one and the second one from the bottom have a lot of material there and some very detailed structures visible within the comet tail. So it really tells us something about the way the material is expelled from the surface of the comet and that's because it's not done all at once. Now certainly the sun will heat up the surface of the comet but the comet again is frozen all frozen ices and when some of them are heated below they will then expel material out and kind of explode outward with more material that will push away from the comet and then become part of the tail. So when more material is expelled when one of these pockets happens to be hit and causing this geyser of material to be expelled out we can get a stronger tail and a more prominent tail visible. And we can also see some of the structures within it as the material is pushed back and we note that the tail is not completely smooth but is very lumpy and has patterns of lines going through it. So we'll learn again something about the structures and how these comet tails are formed. Now it's quite possible to be able to see Comet Ponds-Ponds-Brooks today. So if you're looking and happen to be in the path of the total eclipse that will be occurring this afternoon for those on the eastern part of North America you may be able to see Comet Ponds-Brooks in the sky as the sky darkens because of the eclipse so the moon will block out the sun's light if you're on the path of totality it will become as dark as nighttime and you will then be able to see Comet Ponds-Brooks in the sky. So if you're not watching the eclipse you may get a chance to see the comet as well if you happen to be in the right location today. So that was our picture of the day for April 8th of 2024 it was titled The Changing Ion Tail of Comet Ponds-Brooks We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture previewed to be yesterday's eclipse. So we'll see what that is about tomorrow and until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.