NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has probed the bright core of Comet 17P/Holmes, which, to the delight of sky watchers, mysteriously brightened by nearly a millionfold in a 24-hour period beginning Oct. 23, 2007.
This Picture appears on the Hubble website as well. AMAZING!!! (1.22MB) http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arc...at/xlarge_web/
The ground-based image of Comet 17P/Holmes was taken November 1, 2007, by astrophotographer Alan Dyer. The observations were made in southern Alberta, Canada with a 105mm apochromatic refractor at f/5 with a Canon 20Da camera at ISO400. Field is about 2.5 x 1.5 degrees.
Nice image, but not what we hoped for, probably. At least not what I hoped for in terms of pretty pictures Still an interesting image.
How stoked would Alan Dyer be though!
Agree, wide field-shots or just medium magnification show the comet at it's best. I was hoping to see images as good as that of comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann taken last year by Hubble. Those pictures showed amazing detail of a comet breaking up at ultra high mag.
Just goes to show how small the nucleus must be, not even Hubble can resolve it. I was wondering when Hubble was going to photograph Holmes none the less.
Scott
Still an interesting image.
