The extension of the magnetosphere in the antisunward direction as a result of interaction with the solar wind. In the inner magnetotail, the field lines maintain a roughly dipolar configuration. At
greater distances, the field lines are stretched into northern and southern lobes, separated by a plasmasheet. There is observational evidence for traces of the Earth’s magnetotail as far as 1000 Earth radii downstream.
Earth's magnetotail drags out behind it, shaped by the flow of the solar wind on the night side of Earth. It extends over a hundred thousand miles and can collect much incoming energy from the sun, be
fore releasing it toward Earth or further down the tail.
The region on the night side of the bodywhere the magnetic filed is stretched backwards by the force of the solarwind. For Earth, the magnetotail begins at a night-side radial distance of10 Re (X > -1
0Re).
A measure of brightness in astronomy on a logarithmic scale in which a difference of five magnitudes represents a difference of 100 times in brightness. In this scale the lower a magnitude, the bright
er the object. The faintest magnitude reached by unaided eye is 6.