327-gliese-710-comets-dixon – A wide cosmic diagram illustrates the orange dwarf star Gliese 710 perturbing the Oort cloud of our solar system, triggering a shower of comets. To the left, a spherical cloud composed of millions of icy primordial bodies surrounds a central, bright star system. On the right, the incoming rogue star leaves a wake of active comets with long, luminous blue ion tails streaming away into a vast, dense field of background stars. digital, for Scientific American, circa 2000.
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