Plasma tails: Comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake

Comet Hale-Bopp was one of the largest comets ever recorded, and it exhibited both a massive dust tail and a plasma tail, which developed as it approached the Sun over the course of six months in 1996-1997. Because the dust responds to gravity and light pressure, but plasmas also respond to the local solar wind (Coulomb collisions and magnetic fields), there is typically an angular separation between the two tails