---
title: "The Moon Has a Huge, Invisible, Comet-Like Tail"
description: "Scientists have found that the Moon has an invisible comet-like tail. Find out why sporadic meteor impacts cause it to grow and shoot beams."
date: "2021-03-05"
modified: "2021-03-10"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/moon-invisible-comet-tail"
categories:
  - "Astronomy"
  - "Moon"
  - "Science & Energy"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "comet"
  - "moon"
  - "space"
  - "the digest"
---

# The Moon Has a Huge, Invisible, Comet-Like Tail

![Scientists took a closer look at the comet-like tail that our Moon often grows and figured out that it comes from sporadic meteor impacts.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/moontail.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Futurism\</em\>*

## Casting Moonbeams

Unless you happen to have a special kind of camera, you may never notice that our Moon casts a long, invisible tail of particles trailing behind it, just like a comet or a shooting star.

The Moon's tail, which trails behind it and occasionally even blasts Earth, has been a subject of scientific fascination since its discovery in the late 1990s, [but *The New York Times* reports](<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/science/moon-tail-beam.html>) that scientists now think they finally understand where it came from. The answer is violent — it seems to stem from meteor and asteroid impacts — but the result is a dazzling reminder that the Earth's natural satellite is far more dynamic than some dead, boring rock drifting listlessly through the cosmos.

## Jet Stream

The tail itself is a stream of sodium particles blasted off of the Moon by periodic impacts and energized by the Sun's photons, [according to research](<https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JE006671>) published in the *Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets* by a team of Boston University physicists.

The Moon's tail streams behind it in its orbit [around the Sun](<https://futurism.com/moon-could-escape-earths-orbit-ploonets>), not the Earth, making it look like a straight line from our terrestrial point of view. That also means that we earthlings sometimes find ourselves in the path of the jet stream, which the Earth's gravity focuses into a narrow beam that warps around the planet and continues onward behind it.

## Magical Thing

When it comes down to whether this new discovery has any practical application for scientists, lead author Jeffrey Baumgardner was frank with the *NYT.*

"Probably not," he said.

But that doesn't make it any less fascinating that a dazzling-yet-nearly-invisible light show has been playing out in our own cosmic neighborhood, right under our noses.

"I think it's very cool," study coauthor and undergraduate researcher Sarah Luettgen told the *NYT*. "It almost seems like a magical thing."

**READ MORE:** [The Moon Has a Comet-Like Tail. Every Month It Shoots a Beam Around Earth](<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/science/moon-tail-beam.html>). \[*The New York Times*\]

**More on the Moon:** *[Our Moon Could Escape Earth’s Orbit and Become a “Ploonet”](<https://futurism.com/moon-could-escape-earths-orbit-ploonets>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)