ion tail

The ion tail is not visible in this image.

The field lines "drape" around the comet forming the ion tail.

The 100 nanoseconds signal consists of an electron peak (blue) and an ion tail (red).

The ion tail is the result of ultraviolet radiation ejecting electrons off particles in the coma.

The sodium tail, very narrow and not visible to the naked eye, is near the ion tail but slightly separated from it.

April 2007 when the ion tail of comet Encke was completely severed as the comet passed through a coronal mass ejection.

The orientation of the ion tail inferred from the magnetic field measurements agreed with the source lying in Comet Hyakutake's orbital plane.

Ulysses flew through McNaught's ion tail 160 million miles from the comet's core and instrument readings showed that there was "complex chemistry" in the region.

ESA scientists report that the ionosphere of the planet Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions."

On May 1, 1996, the spacecraft unexpectedly crossed the ion tail of Comet Hyakutake (C/1996 B2), revealing the tail to be at least 3.8 AU in length.

If the ion tail loading is sufficient, then the magnetic field lines are squeezed together to the point where, at some distance along the ion tail, magnetic reconnection occurs.

The comet is notable for its "impressive green coma and long ion tail", which spanned 5 degrees as of June 6, 2010, and its appearance has been likened to an "apple on a stick."

While the solid nucleus of comets is generally less than 50 km across, the coma may be larger than the Sun, and ion tails have been observed to extend 3.8 astronomical units (570 million km).

The antitail appears, when viewed from Earth, as a spike projecting from the comet's coma towards the sun, and thus geometrically opposite to the other tails: the ion tail and the dust tail.

At the same time, the ion tail, made of gases, always points directly away from the Sun, as this gas is more strongly affected by the solar wind than is dust, following magnetic field lines rather than an orbital trajectory.

In this bow shock, large concentrations of cometary ions (called "pick-up ions") congregate and act to "load" the solar magnetic field with plasma, such that the field lines "drape" around the comet forming the ion tail.

The green colors in the coma are caused by the presence of cyanogen and diatomic carbon, while bluish hues in the ion tail are produced by positively-charged carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide ions.

This has been observed on a number of occasions, one notable event being recorded on April 20, 2007, when the ion tail of Encke's Comet was completely severed while the comet passed through a coronal mass ejection.

A bright dust tail is created by the reflection of sunlight from dust streaming from the comet, while a fainter ion tail is made up of electrically charged atoms swept from the comet by the solar wind.

The hydrogen I got from the nucleus was even dirtier than I expected, so the drive burned wrong, and the second ion tail I made interacted weirdly with the comet's own and gave me more thrust than I wanted, in an uncontrollable direction.

In some cases, such as the Great Comet of 1882, a comet develops a visible antitail or dust tail, which points in a different direction and when the viewing angle and parallax are just right may appear to point in the opposite direction from the normal ion tail.