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Men are from Mars. You have to go to Venus for the tail.
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(from a previously unused file on the hard drive)New Molecule Found In Comet May Unlock Solar System OriginsThe discovery of nitrogen sulfide (NS), a molecule known to exist within dense interstellar clouds, but previously unseen in a comet, may offer new clues to the origin of the solar system... The compound is the only known molecule in comets that contains both nitrogen and sulfur. The molecule is a "radical," which means that chemically, it is highly reactive... The discovery raises the question of whether the NS in comet Hale-Bopp (pictured here in a timed exposure with the moon) has existed since the start of the solar system, or if it was produced as a result of other compounds in the comet breaking apart... The way in which the abundance of NS varies in the comet's atmosphere -- or coma -- would indicate whether the molecule is the result of other compounds breaking apart due to the effect of sunlight, or whether it was produced by chemical reactions. To make such a determination, the NS molecule must be found in other comets.
Space.com
Oct 15 1999 12:46:25 ET
Sodium TailOn 1997 April 16, astronomers at the La Palma Observatory used a dedicated comet camera, CoCAM, to discover a previously unobserved type of cometary tail, the sodium tail, visible here as the straight line from bottom right to top left, consisting of neutral atoms.Sodium gas trail discovered behind the Hale-Bopp cometAstronomers say the have found a third tail trailing behind the Hale-Bopp comet - a thin straight jet of sodium gas unlike any other seen before, The Boston Globe reported yesterday. The discovery was made Friday by a team of astronomers at the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes in the Canary Islands. The scientists were at a loss to explain how the sodium tail was created. The astronomers used a filter over a telescope that allowed them to detect the light given off by sodium gas, the same yellow glow seen in ordinary sodium-vapor street lamps. Astronomers have long known that comets have two types of tails - one made of dust and the other of electrically charged gas called plasma. They have also known that comets contain sodium, but had never seen it before in the form of a tail.
Update 4/20/97
Carbon clue implies comets orbit other starsCarbon ions have been seen for the first time in a comet's tail by US scientists. The finding suggests that comets, so far seen only in our own Solar System, might well orbit other stars. This conclusion stems from the fact that similar charged particles have been measured in the light from a nearby star, Beta Pictoris, which is surrounded by a dusty disk... The new discovery represents the first strong evidence that dust contributes to a comet's plasma tail, rather than only evaporating ices. Comet Kudo-Fujikawa was discovered in December 2002 and is thought to orbit the Sun once every 50,000 to 100,000 years... The comet passed five times closer to the Sun than the Earth does, experiencing 25 times the radiation. A spectrometer on SOHO allowed the team to deduce which ions were present in the comet... The tail contained about 700 million kilograms of carbon ions. The sheer mass of carbon ions - equivalent to 25 per cent of the comet's water - took the researchers by surprise. It meant the source of the ions could not be the usual suspect, carbon monoxide ice, as this made up less than 10 per cent of the comet relative to water... Some scientists have suggested that the chemical building blocks of life may have arrived on Earth on impacting comets. Povich says their study does not directly address that question, but adds "it is reassuring to see these materials reappearing".
by Maggie McKee
15:15 12 December 03
Discovery of Vast Tail on Dying Star Promises Clues to Solar Birth
The Washington Post via Drudge Report | August 16, 2007 | Marc Kaufman
Posted on 08/15/2007 10:42:32 PM EDT by RDTF
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1881836/posts
Physics NewsA sodium nebula around Jupiter may be the largest object ever recorded on film. A group of astronomers at Boston University, working at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, have detected a neutral cloud of sodium out to distances beyond 400 Jovian radii. The Boston astronomers believe that the shape of the nebula will provide information about Jupiter's magnetosphere and that their technique of measuring non-spherical neutral clouds may be applicable to the study of other planetary magnetospheres.
Phillip F. Schew
November 27, 1990Physics NewsAstronomers have previously known of a sodium cloud which precedes the moon Io in its orbit around Jupiter. The cloud is believed to arise from slow escape of sodium from Io. Now the Galileo spacecraft is providing details of another sodium feature at Io, more of a fast-escaping spray or jet, thought to come about when Io plows through Jupiter's potent magnetic field, a process which induces mega-amp currents through Io's atmosphere... New pictures, reported by scientists at the University of Colorado... and Boston University (Jody Wilson), localize the source of the sodium to a region smaller than Io's diameter, suggesting that Io's atmosphere might not be global; that is, the atmosphere might be patchy and not extend all the way to the poles.
Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
November 9, 1999
Joint News ReleaseBoston University astronomers announced today the discovery of an enormous tail of sodium gas stretching to great distances from the moon. The observations were made at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, on nights following the Leonid meteor shower of November 1998. The tail of sodium gas was seen to distances of at least 500,000 miles from the moon, changing its appearance over three consecutive nights... Ten years ago, groundbased telescopes revealed that sodium gas (Na) was in the lunar atmosphere, an element that can be used to trace the shape and behavior of such a thin atmosphere... The BU team considered several theories that could explain these unusual features, ruling out a comet, the impact of Leonid meteors upon dust in the solar system, and even possible instrumentation problems... [T]he August observations without meteors and the November observations with meteors imply that the daily flux of micrometeors that strikes the moon's surface creates an extended tail at all times; it was just so enhanced during the strong Leonid storm that it was observed rather easily.
Boston University
Center for Space Physics
and American Geophysical Union
1 June 1999