(meteorobs) OT: Multiple ion tails in a comet?

[Lewis J. Gramer]

NOTE: This is slightly off-topic - but I do not belong to any comet
observing or science forums. And as the moon is riding high, and other
discussions have dropped off a bit lately, I thought - why not?

Someone in a local club recently imaged C/2001 Q4 (the NEAT comet!), and
another club member remarked from that image that... "there appear to be
several ionized tails going off in different directions. Must be why the
coma looks so concentrated but still wide and bright. Probably several
different eruptions taking place at the same time."

Now I confess to a certain naiveté when it comes to comets - I love
looking at them in a scope, and of course I'm fascinated with their dust
tails (i.e., meteoroid trails!) But this is the first reference I recall
to the idea of a comet having MULTIPLE ion tails... It seems like it
MIGHT make sense - after all, if two widely disparate regions of a
large, SLOWLY rotating comet nucleus were each outgassing at different
times in its rotation, we might actually see these streams of ions being
"blown" directly away from the Sun at different times. Then with orbital
motion and the comet's changing aspect relative to the sun, I think it
MIGHT appear that there were two or more ion tails emerging from the
messy inner coma - one terminating closer to the actual nucleus than the
other...

It seems like an unlikely scenario to my naïve ears - but a possible
one! Then again, the original writer may have just misspoken, and meant
to say "multiple dust tails". Still, the comment made me curious!


So - is this in fact the case with this Comet NEAT? Or more broadly, is
it even possible for a comet to appear to have more than one ion tail
simultaneously? I will welcome correction from those more knowledgeable
about comet dynamics...

Clear skies,
Lew