Abstract
Although the coma is the chief distinguishing feature of a comet, in the popular mind these objects are most commonly associated with the tails, which many of their number display. Not all comets grow observable tails, and others sport faint appendages only discernible on photographs and CCD images. Nevertheless others sprout tails that are truly magnificent both in size and intensity. The tail of Comet Ikeya-Seki (1965), for example, extended up to a distance equal to that of Earth and the Sun, while ions from the tail of Comet Hyakutake in 1996 were detected by spacecraft at over 3 times that distance from the comet’s head. Then, in 2007, the great Comet McNaught extended a magnificent tail as long as that of Ikeya-Seki but around 65 million km wide!
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seargent, D.A.J. (2017). The Formation of Tails. In: Visually Observing Comets. Astronomer's Pocket Field Guide. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45435-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45435-1_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45434-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45435-1
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)