Astronomy:Sodium tail of the Moon

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Short description: Astrochemical phenomenon near lunar orbit


Observations and modelling of the Moon’s sodium tail “spot”.
Brightness of the focused lunar tail’s spot

The Moon has a comet-like tail of sodium atoms too faint to be detected by the human eye. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers long, the feature was discovered in 1998 as a result of scientists from Boston University observing the Leonid meteor shower.[1][2][3]

The Moon is constantly releasing atomic sodium as a fine dust from its surface due to photon-stimulated desorption, solar wind sputtering, and meteorite impacts.[4] Solar radiation pressure accelerates the sodium atoms away from the Sun, forming an elongated tail toward the antisolar direction.

The continual impacts of small meteorites produce a constant "tail" from the Moon, but the Leonids intensified it,[5] thus making it more observable from Earth than usual.[6]

The Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-2 mission discovered an abundance of sodium on the Moon in October 2023.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Astronomers discover that moon has long, comet-like tail". CNN. 1999-06-07. http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9906/07/lunar.sodium.trail/. 
  2. ↑ "The Sodium Tail of the Moon". NASA. 2009-12-01. Retrieved 2017-10-20
  3. ↑ "The Moon's Sodium Tail and the Leonid Meteor Shower". B.U. Imaging Science Team. http://sirius.bu.edu/moontail/. 
  4. ↑ Matta, M.; Smith, S.; Baumgardner, J.; Wilson, J.; Martinis, C.; Mendillo, M. (December 2009). "The sodium tail of the Moon". Icarus 204 (2): 409–417. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2009.06.017. Bibcode: 2009Icar..204..409M. 
  5. ↑ "Lunar Leonids 2000". NASA. 2000-11-17. https://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast26oct_1.htm. 
  6. ↑ "Moon's tail spotted". BBC. 1999-06-09. https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/363105.stm. 
  7. ↑ "Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter Maps An 'Abundance of Sodium' On the Moon's Surface for the First Time Ever; Here's What It Means" (in en-IN). https://weather.com/en-IN/india/space/news/2022-10-12-chandrayaan-2-orbiter-maps-abundance-of-sodium-on-the-moons-surface. 



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