Mira A’s Tail

In 2007, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or GALEX scanned Mira A, an older red giant star, as part of an ongoing surgery to scan the entire sky in ultraviolet light. Astronomers were shocked to find a 13 light year long, comet-like tail trailing behind Mira A. The star is plowing through the Universe unusually fast, at about 291,000 miles an hour. Until this discovery, it was thought that stars could not have tails.