Sodium near the Tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner

Details Sodium near the Tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner Sodium near the Tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner

Aug 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998icar..134..249o&link_type=abstract

Icarus, Volume 134, Issue 2, pp. 249-252.

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Scientific paper

In September 1985, the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) Spacecraft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner at a distance of 7800 km downstream from the nucleus. The relative velocity between comet and spacecraft was 21 km/s, and instruments aboard the spacecraft made magnetic field, energetic particle, and ion composition measurements. The composition measurements showed the presence of water group and CO^+ ions, as well as an appreciable, but localized flux of ions having M/Q = 24 +/- 1 adjacent to the edges of the plasma tail. These ions were tentatively identified by M. A. Coplan et al. (1987, J. Geophys. Res. 92, 39-46) as either C^+_2 or Na^+. Motivated by recent observations of neutral sodium in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp (G. Cremonese et al., 1997, Astrophys. J. Lett. 490, L199), the Giacobini-Zinner composition data have been reexamined, particularly with regard to the spatial distribution of the M/Q = 24 +/- 1 ions, now identified as Na^+. This conclusion along with other observations of neutral sodium in comets clearly show that there are a variety of sources of sodium in comets.

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