Although the Earth’s magnetosphere extends typically out to 10 RE in the sunward direction, it extends to at least 500RE in the anti-sunward direction. This downstream region of the magnetosphere is called the magnetotail.
Beyond about 30 RE, the magnetotail becomes cylindrical with radius virtually independent of distance from the Earth (around 15 to 30 RE in radius depending on solar wind pressure). It does not point directly anti-sunwards but swings according to solar wind velocity components up to about 10 degrees from the Earth-Sun line in both the ecliptic plane and perpendicular to it. The mean deflection with respect to the Earth-Sun line is about 4 degrees.
Within the magnetotail, there are somewhat different plasmas, with hotter plasma (the plasma sheet) around the ecliptic plane and the cooler plasma (the lobes/mantle) north and south of it [RD.117]. Although these are magnetically linked to regions near the Earth, populated with ions of ionospheric and solar wind origin respectively, in this region virtually all ions are of solar wind origin [RD.6] and the differences in density and temperature are not as strong as near the Earth.