the only experience i have directly, other than years of sporadic comet monitoring and imaging of bright comets, meteor counts/observing, and aurora monitoring/imaging reports submitted to public sites.
was our brush's with the Ulysses Comet Watch (they are interested in ion tail directions, length and anomalies, as they reflect/trace out the suns activity/solar wind, like ink in water as they described it once, particularly our series's of images of comet WM1 in early 2002, as we had some of the only pics of the comet during the period before it's famous outburst. And it was during the surprise second peak of the solar max and the comet was in a unique position above the southern pole of the sun, and we did indeed capture a tail disconnection event, the only ones to do so
http://www.fg-kometen.de/00wm1cfo.html
the highlight was probaly exchanging emails with a certain very nice and happy Jack Brandt!
we contributed also with a pic of V1 later on, as we clearly had the ion tail (widefield) - i assume with the advent of STEREO that we southerners may not be needed so much in this area any longer?