Sodium tail of the Moon
Astrochemical phenomenon near lunar orbit
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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]
