A comet has two tails. One is a dust tail pushed by light from the sun. Wired Science blogger Rhett Allain uses physics to explain how light can push on matter.
There are two tails because there are two ways the comet can interact with the sun. Everyone thinks about light coming from the sun. However, there is also the solar wind. The solar wind is really just charged particles (like electrons and protons) that escape from the sun due to their high velocities. These charged particles then interact with the ionized gas produced from the comet.
The other tail is due to an interaction with the dust produced by the comet and the light from the sun. Really, it is this interaction that I want to talk about.
Credit : Wired.com
Picture Credit : Google
