41K
Observers: Francois Colas, Jean Lecacheux, Sylvie Jancart, Luc Henrard
Location: Pic du Midi Observatory, France
Date: April 29, 1997 20:35 UT
The sodium tail confirmed by the Pic-du-Midi team. April 29
The newly discovered tail of neutral sodium atoms (see IAUC 6631 and
Web pages made by the Isaac Newton Group, Canary Islands) is a major
new feature, never seen in bright comets in the past, excepted during
some hours in the sungrazing ones, but under very extreme temperature
conditions that comet Hale-Bopp does not experience.
We used a 50-mm F/1.4 Pentax photographic objective , a narrow band
interference filter and a HiSiS-44 CCD camera (equipped with a Kodak
1536x1024 chip) to observe the new sodium tail of the comet. The field
of view was not less than 15x10 degrees. The bandpass centered on the
yellow D line doublet was 2.8 nm wide. The present image is a 32
minutes integration near 20 h 35 UT on April 29th evening. North is up.
The sodium tail is the narrow 8 degrees long feature near p.a. 55
degrees. Do not confuse it with the ion tail, of which general
orientation is roughly similar : in fact no ion emission seems exist in
our filter bandpass.
The well marked curvature of the neutral sodium tail in this image
appears important to understand the formation mechanism .
41K
Comet Hale-Bopp Home Page