Three tails of comet Hale‐Bopp
Three tails of comet Hale‐Bopp
复制标题
海尔-波普彗星的三尾
DOI：
10.1029/97gl03704
复制
发表时间：
1998
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
M. Mendillo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Wilson;J. Baumgardner;M. Mendillo
我们报告了1997年3月麦克唐纳天文台利用大视场、多波长观测对Hale - Bopp彗星钠尾的成像探测。我们从钠滤光器图像中减去带外图像，得到原子钠尾巴，我们发现它的宽度比尘埃或离子尾巴都要宽。钠尾巴的交叉尾综合亮度随着离核距离的增加而增加，至少增加800万公里。我们数据中钠尾巴的方向与其他观测者在不同时间成像的离子尾巴、尘埃尾巴和钠尾巴不同。为了解释这些特征，必须在彗核的后方有一个扩展的钠原子源。我们认为，1997年3月的钠尾是由尘尾颗粒中的钠原子释放而产生的。
We report on the imaging detection of the sodium tail of comet Hale‐Bopp using large field‐of‐view, multi‐wavelength observations from the McDonald Observatory in March 1997. We subtract off‐band images from sodium‐filter images to obtain the atomic sodium tail, and we find it to be more extended in width than either the dust or ion tails. The cross‐tail integrated brightness of the sodium tail increases with distance from the nucleus for at least 8 million km. The direction of the sodium tail in our data is different from the ion tail, the dust tail, and the sodium tails imaged at different times by other observers. To account for these characteristics, there must be an extended source of sodium atoms tailward of the comet nucleus. We propose that the sodium tail in March 1997 was produced by the release of sodium atoms from grains in the dust tail.