Plasma Tail - A narrow, ionized comet tail pointing directly away from the Sun
Plate - A section of the Earth's lithosphere pushed about by convective currents within the mantle ...
"The plasma tails of comets and the interplanetary plasma". Space Science Reviews 1 (3): 553. doi:10.1007/BF00225271.
^ a b Carroll, B.W.; Ostlie, D.A. (1996). An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics. Addison-Wesley. p. 864-874.
NASA's International Cometary Explorer (ICE) passed through the plasma tail of 21P/Giacobini-Zinner in 1985. After this encounter, ICE joined a fleet of other spacecraft observing 1P/Halley.
The solar wind of high-speed protons and electrons sweeps cometary ions in a direction away from the Sun, producing a straight plasma tail. A second tail consisting of dust particles about a micrometer in size may appear.
There is an electrically active structure called a magnetotail (or plasma tail) extending for millions of kilometers from Earth, always pointing away from the Sun.
"It was very difficult to observe Comet McNaught's plasma tail remotely in comparison with the bright dust tail, so we can't really estimate how long it might be, " says Jones. "What we can say is that Ulysses took just 2.
Many phenomena are directly related to the solar wind, including geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth, aurorae (e.g., Northern Lights) and the plasma tail of a comet always pointing away from the sun.
Ion Tail: A tail of charged gases (ions) always faces away from the sun because the solar wind (ions streaming from the sun at high velocities) pushes it away (it is also called the plasma tail).
Comet: A small body (a "dirty iceball", typically 1 km across, with dust and plasma tails) that circles the Sun with a highly elliptical orbit.
This photograph was taken by amateur astronomer John Loborde on March 9, 1976. This picture shows two distinct tails. The thin blue plasma tail is made up of gases and the broad white tail is made up of microscopic dust particles.
ion tail Thin stream of ionized gas that is pushed away from the head of a comet by the solar wind. It extends directly away from the Sun. Often referred to as a plasma tail.
The ion tail is much less massive, and is accelerated so greatly that it appears as a nearly straight line extending away from the comet opposite the Sun. Thus, comets should have two distinct tails. The thin blue plasma tail is made up of gases and ...
blows the dust of the coma away from the head and produces a dust tail, which is often rather wide, featureless, and yellowish. The solar wind, on the other hand, drags ionized gas away in a slightly different direction and produces a plasma tail, ...
pushes some of the dust away from the Sun, creating a long tail of dust. The solar wind, a stream of charged subatomic particles from the Sun's surface, blows gas from the coma into a separate tail, known as either the ion, gas, or plasma tail.
 See also: Tail, Solar, Plasma, Comet, Sun
  
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