Comet
17P/Holmes, fading after its dramatic outburst made it visible to the naked
eye, got one last look from astronomers at the Multiple Mirror Telescope
Observatory (MMTO) on Mount Hopkins, AZ.
Holmes
brightened about one million times in late October, ejecting a vast cloud of
dust and gas that now spans more than 870,000 miles – larger than the Sun's
865,000 mile diameter. Now receding in brightness, the comet is difficult to
see without binoculars or a telescope.
Smithsonian
scientists, who jointly run MMTO with the University of Arizona, snapped the photo of Comet Holmes
using a giant 300 megapixel camera. Because several photos centered on the
comet were combined to make the image, individual stars appear as a line of
colored dots.
– M. Ashby & N. Caldwell (CfA) and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), MMTO
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