Observations Of The Sodium Tail Of Mercury

Details Observations Of The Sodium Tail Of Mercury Observations Of The Sodium Tail Of Mercury

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.2502p&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #25.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.458

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Cross-sections of the sodium emission tail of Mercury were measured at various distances down the tail when Mercury was moving away from the Sun (true anomaly angles < 180o), and again when Mercury was moving towards the Sun (true anomaly angles >180o). As predicted in early modeling studies, significant differences were expected between these two cases, as the result of Doppler shifts to higher solar intensity in the former case, and to lower solar intensity for the latter case. For observations with Mercury moving away from the Sun, the sodium tail was observed out to about 40,000 kilometers (16 Mercury radii, Rm) downstream. The source rates for sodium generation from Mercury into the tail were found to be in the range 3 to 9 x 1023 atoms/sec, corresponding to between 1 and 10% of the total sodium production rate on the planet. The limiting value of radiation acceleration required to produce an observable sodium tail was estimated to be 100 ± 10 cm/sec2. For observations where Mercury was moving towards the Sun, the emission intensity in the sodium tail decreased very rapidly with distance downstream, disappearing entirely beyond 12,000 kilometers (6 Rm) for radiation accelerations of 128.7 and 135.4 cm/sec2. For smaller radiation accelerations, the sodium tail was not detectable at all, yielding a limiting value for tail generation of about 125 ± 5 cm/sec2. Interpretation of the limiting radiation acceleration values suggests that the process that generates the sodium tail yields atoms with energies of up to 3.5 eV. Particle sputtering is the most reasonable source process.

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