Salty Space: Sodium Tails on Comets, Asteroids, Planets and Moons

[Holger Isenberg]

Where's all that sodium coming from seen as millions of km long straight tails on comets, planets and Moons?
And what's accelerating it faster than ions? The sodium is nearly straight and consists of neutral single sodium atoms, compared to the slightly bent plasma / ion tail and the significantly bent dust tail. Single sodium atoms it must be as for molecules the calculated force by the solar wind is insufficient.

Sodium tail of Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE
https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacemovie/50130384432

70km/s sodium emission velocity at Comet Hale Bopp, 10E10km length?
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 ... t.html#fg2

Sodium Tail of the Moon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_tail_of_the_Moon

Not a comet, not even a meteor. This is the planet Mercury and its 24 Mkm long sodium tail!
https://twitter.com/StarWalk/status/1600841544583581697
https://twitter.com/SeVoSpace/status/15 ... 6878561280

Sodium Brightening of (3200) Phaethon near Perihelion
Qicheng Zhang, Karl Battams, Quanzhi Ye (叶泉志), Matthew M. Knight, Carl A. Schmidt, 2023
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/acc866

Venus' Tail of the Unexpected, spanning 45 Mkm and reaching Earth
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1975217/posts

[Maol]