APOD: 2020 July 22 Б The Structured Tails of Comet NEOWISE
22.07.2020

What is creating the structure in Comet NEOWISE's tails? Of the two tails evident, the blue ion tail on the left points directly away from the Sun and is pushed out by the flowing and charged solar wind.

Comet Hale-Bopp's Developing Tail
14.03.1997

Comet Hale-Bopp is living up to its expectations. Besides the brightness of its coma, a comet is typically remembered by the length of its tails. As visible in the above picture taken last week, Comet Hale-Bopp's blue ion tail shows a dramatic extension, with current reports of about 20 degrees from dark locations.

Comet CG Creates Its Dust Tail
12.07.2020

Where do comet tails come from? There are no obvious places on the nuclei of comets from which the jets that create comet tails emanate. One of the best images of emerging jets...

Comet Hale-Bopp Develops a Tail
12.02.1997

Comet Hale-Bopp has quite a tail to tell already. This remarkable comet was first discovered in 1995, even before Comet Hyakutake. Since then, this erupting snowball continues to fall into our inner Solar System and is starting to put on quite a show.

APOD: 2025 December 30 Б An Artificial Comet
30.12.2025

Yes, but can your comet tail do this? No, and what you are seeing is not the tail of a comet. The picture features a cleverly overlayed time-lapse sequence of a group of satellites orbiting Earth together in June.

Comet ZTF: Orbital Plane Crossing
27.01.2023

The current darling of the northern night, Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF is captured in this telescopic image from a dark sky location at June Lake, California. Of course Comet ZTF has been growing brighter in recent days, headed for its closest approach to Earth on February 1.

Earth, Clouds, Sky, Comet
3.04.1997

Does a comet's dust tail always orbit behind it? Since comets rotate, they shed gas and dust in all directions equally. Small ice and dust particles expelled by the comet, however, are literally pushed around by sunlight. The smaller the particle, the greater the effect.

Hale-Bopp's Fickle Ion Tail
14.05.1997

What's happening to Comet Hale-Bopp's blue ion tail? The comet's ion tail is fluctuating more rapidly as it passes a region of changing solar wind. As the comet passes from north to south, it crosses the plane of the Sun's equator, where the solar magnetic field changes direction.

Mercurys Sodium Tail
3.05.2022

That's no comet. Below the Pleiades star cluster is actually a planet: Mercury. Long exposures of our Solar System's innermost planet may reveal something unexpected: a tail. Mercury's thin atmosphere contains small amounts of sodium that glow when excited by light from the Sun.

Comet LINEAR Extends
10.07.2000

Comet LINEAR's tail appears to be extending. Many sky watchers are closely following Comet C/1999 S4 LINEAR and wondering if it will develop an impressive tail or become visible to the naked eye later this month.