🧪 Comet Solar Storm: Ion-Tail Disconnection (2D)

This 2D companion strips the comet-CME encounter down to a flat, top-down diagram so the mechanism reads clearly: the sun sits at the left edge, a comet holds station further out, and pressing Launch CME sends an expanding shock front travelling across the gap at a speed you set — anywhere from a slow 400 km/s wind gust to a fast 2,400 km/s eruption. When the front reaches the comet, the straight blue ion tail — which normally points directly away from the sun, shaped by the interplanetary magnetic field rather than gravity — begins to kink and bend, while the curved yellow dust tail (shaped mostly by radiation pressure and orbital motion) keeps drifting along its own path almost undisturbed. Push plasma density and a southward-pointing field polarity high enough during impact and the back half of the ion tail visibly peels away and drifts off — a real, observed event called a tail disconnection — while a northward or turbulent field resists it. Live readouts track the interplanetary magnetic field strength in nanotesla, the tail-bend angle and the disconnection percentage, turning the 3D scene's visual drama into numbers you can read off directly.