The Inner Coma of Comet Hyakutake
The most recent ESO observations of bright Comet Hyakutake have shown rapid changes in the innermost coma, within a few hundred kilometres from the cometary nucleus. This result has only become possible because of the unusual combination of a bright comet being near the Earth, together with the excellent imaging quality of the ESO 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT).
For the further analysis, a comparison (with the image eso9623a) was made of a series of 12 R-frames each, obtained with a 30-min interval.
The field shown in this image is 60 x 60 arcsec, i.e. about 10,000 km square at the distance of the comet. The image taken on 19 March 1996.Credit:
About the Image
|Release date:||12 July 2010, 17:07|
|Size:||508 x 553 px|
About the Object
|Type:||• Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet : Coma|
• X - Solar System
Colours & filters
|New Technology Telescope|