Mercury's Sodium Tail

[John]

I didn't know about this phenomenon which is unique to Mercury, until this link was posted on my society forum by Nigel Wakefield. I found it very interesting so I thought I would share it here - hope that is OK Nigel ?

https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=163365

Andrea Alessandrini has done really well to capture this.

Looking further into this I came across this NASA web page on it:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/mercurys-sodium-tail

I'm sure there is plenty more out there on this.

It's good to learn new stuff - thanks Nigel

 

 

[DaveS]

That's interesting. I dimly remember reading about the Na tail, but didn't realise it could be imaged from here. Maybe in an area without Na lamps nearby ()Eg, the Bride Valley) it might make an interesting project.

Now off to EO to look up the price of Na filters.

[DaveS]

Well, they do a 10nm bandwidth 589 nm filter. But in 50mm it's a bit pricey Here and I'm not convinced of the optical quality.

[Geoff Barnes]

Yes, news to me too @John. Did you see I featured this in my post in the Observing Atlas Y4 thread?

[niallk]

Never heard of that phenomenon before - wow!  Amazing photo ; thanks for posting

[JamesF]

I'd never heard of it before and I think it's fascinating.  Does this mean that Mercury is losing mass in a significant way, for example?  If so, what effect will that have on it?  Is it a relatively recent and/or transient phenomenon, or is it likely to have been going on for millions of years?  How long might it be expected to continue?

James

[PeterW]

Anyone try having a look? Maybe a multi minute exposure, but with a 66mm scope and a normal digital camera. Wonder if it’s worth a punt putting a filter on a larger scope and eyeballing it… the eye is pretty sensitive, the filter ought to blocking of the stray light, to ohhh extra filtration to remove out of band might be needed.

 

Peter

[LukeSkywatcher]

Interesting. Never heard of it. Does look like a comet.

[PeterW]

The imager hasn’t heard of any visual observations, but his exposure is quite long, so maybe a very long shot… but filtration and aperture (and the right time of year, solar cycle and Mercury orbit distance) might help. Maybe worth some more digging….. 

Another one for the almost impossible… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kordylewski_cloud

 

peter