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.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
