<God I love that nine planets page, very nice. I don't think I have ever seen one so well done. But... Still I have this question. When any of the Moon orbiters, or Mars orbiters many photographs are examined the exhausted water vapor, and gasses, and possibly dust just floats along with the craft all the way until a thruster slightly changes the path. Only then do the photographs begin to clear up, but the debris stays close enough even then to be seen. This was truly evident on Apollo 13. No effect from solar wind at all.

We’re still dealing with size ratio.

Solar wind is 400 km/s strong, but with a density of 2 to 20 protons per cubic centimeter. A large, diaphanous sail would take a while to react to the wind and begin any progress outbound from the Sun, but compact debris and space-junk would take much longer, possibly never showing the desired effect due to a lack of surface area for the wind to interact with.

Now in crude measurements to be sure, the dust trail, which extends from nearly zero to ten million kilometers in length in some shots in less than 24 hours as the comet passes into the so called "active" zone. Even if there were a way for the dust to stand still while the comet continues on you can't account for the sudden movement of the dust tail. Then there is the lateral movement. The dust tail can be seen to move laterally, or perpendicular to its comets direction up to 350,000 kilometers in less than 20 minutes. Hello, that’s the distance to the moon in less than twenty minutes by dust that is a million miles from the comet that expelled it. I have trouble using solar wind to explain this, when the same solar wind had no effect on lunar shots and Martian shots.

I have no knowledge of a comet tail wagging. Perhaps there is a link to this event?

The meteor showers you mention, could easily be from the debris of the comet, but it is just as likely that it is debris that is caught in the same orbit as the comet itself and could easily have fallen off the comet during inactive periods far from earth. Things could bump into each other out there and loose debris could be delayed by years on its path but still be in the same orbit. It doesn’t matter, the point is that we can predict the meteor shower by looking at Earth’s orbit and predicting when it intersects the comets orbit.

No.

The distance between object is incredibly huge. 99.99 percent of space is vacant. The Asteroid Belt is an excellent example of this, comprised of literally billions of bits of matter. All roll up into a ball, it would still be smaller than our own Moon. Asteroid and comet collisions with each other are incredibly rare.

The so called Ion tail, could be many things. Including an Ion tail, but again its speed of growth, and lateral movement and ray like qualities lead me down the path of some sort of optical phenomenon. I know that water vapor freezes at about -30 F in the ultra cold of near zero K it could be that hydrogen vapors or even molecules turn into crystalline form at some point. It could be that there is enough difference in the temperature in the shadow of the comet to trigger crystal formation of what ever gasses or vapors exist there to cause them to become visible. I doubt this even as I say it. But it is possible.



As you know, my pet theory is that the comet itself is the center of a huge but invisible cloud of ice crystals. Because of the six sided sublimated form they take on they would refract light, only from the comet, not from the sun, in a manner to create the illusion of a tail and it would be right where the Ion tail shows up. The problem is that it should be white, or rainbow colored, not blue. This is where my theory falls apart. But at least with the light show theory the tails could easily move at the speed they are shown to move.

The solar wind theory of tail movement breaks down earlier. We won't know until we produce man made controlled tests, or drive on over and collect samples and photographs from within the tail.





Well, a true test of this sort cannot be accomplished from the shuttle. A manmade comet would need to be launched to interplanetary space where the Solar wind would have the fullest effect.

Hmm-m...

I wonder what it would look like resting on the surface of the Moon...

Dan