Credit: ESO

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.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9623b/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License