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Astronomy Picture of the Day
Comet Holmes from the Hubble Space Telescope
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#104849
by
[z]Barbara Harris
@
29.11.2007 00:00
- nach oben -
Comet Holmes from the Hubble Space Telescope
Explanation:
Why did Comet Holmes brighten?
The unexpectedly bright
Comet 17P/Holmes
continues to grace northern skies as a
naked-eye
addition
to the constellation Perseus.
Any northern
sky enthusiast
with a
dark sky
, a
bright curiosity
, and a
recent sky map
should still be able to
locate the comet
in a few minutes.
What is seen, however, is primarily the sun-light reflecting dust
coma
.
It surrounds an
iceberg nucleus
too small and too faint to discern.
Clues to the nearly
million-fold brightness increase
are therefore being sought in dramatic images of the
enigmatic comet's central
regions taken earlier this month by the
Hubble Space
Telescope
.
One such Hubble image,
shown above
, indicates a still unresolved dense
central dust cloud near the
nucleus
,
surrounded by a more complex, anisotropic coma.
The
Hubble images
do not show any
obvious fragmentation
of the nucleus, however, as was seen last year in
Comet Schwassman-Wachmann 3
.
Observers around and above the world will continue to study this
unusual addition to the night sky
.
Credit & Copyright