DISTURBANCES OF COMETARY AND EARTHS MAGNETOSPHERES BY SINGLE SOLAR-FLARES

Comets P/Brorsen-Metcalf and C/Okazaki-Levy-Rudenko appeared. successi vely in 1989 and displayed various disturbances of their magnetosphere s. We observed two cases of a phenomenon in which a disconnection even t of the cometary plasma tail (on August 13 and November 16, 1989) was followed by a terrestrial magnetic storm (on August 14 and November 1 7). A survey of solar flares suggests that an identical solar flare ex cited successively the cometary magnetosphere an the Earth's magnetosp here in each case. The average velocities of the shock front in interp lanetary space were estimated by using the magnetospheric disturbances of both the comets and the Earth together with the assumed responsibl e solar flare. It is speculated from the results that the propagation of the shock front associated with the flare is not symmetric with res pect to the radial axis from the flare region of the Sun.