Mercury gas tail imaged by NASA STEREO spacecraft.

[3488]

Two NASA satellites snapped photos of the planet Mercury's comet-like tail. Scientists didnt notice the tail in the photos right away; an amateur astronomer asked th........

Mercury gas tail seen.

Andrew Brown.

 

[EarthlingX]

One more article, with video :
http://www.universetoday.com : STEREO Catches Mercury Acting Like a Comet

Sep 23rd 2010

by Nancy Atkinson

...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRjGMlRkRj0[/youtube]

UniverseTodayVideos | September 23, 2010

A movie showing a 4 day period when Mercury tail was visible from the STEREO A spacecraft on 6-9 February 2008. Credit: Carl Schmidt, Jeffrey Baumgardner, Prof. Joshua Semeter from Boston University. See this page for more information: http://sirius.bu.edu/News/

...

Read the team’s paper: “Observations of Mercury’s Escaping Sodium Atmosphere by the STEREO Spacecraft”