Astronomy Picture of the Day 10-03-03

Explanation: While this may not be the most esthetic image of Comet Halley that you have ever seen, it is likely the most unique. The tiny cluster of pixels circled is the famous comet along its orbit over 4 billion (4,000,000,000) kilometers or 28 AU from the Sun -- a record distance for a comet observation. Its last passage through our neck of the woods in 1985, Comet Halley presently cruises through the dim reaches of the outer solar system, almost as far away as outermost gas giant Neptune, and shows no sign of activity. Captured in March, this negative image is a composite of digital exposures made with three of ESO's Very Large Telescopes. The exposures are registered on the moving comet, so the picture shows background stars and galaxies as elongated smudges. An earth-orbiting satellite appears as a dark streak at the top. Comet Halley is clearly extremely faint here, but large earthbound telescopes will be able to follow it as it grows fainter still, reaching the most distant point in its orbit, more than 5 billion kilometers (35 AU) from the Sun, in 2023.

Guess it was a slow night at the VLT!

Comet Halley will return to the inner solar system in the year 2061.

There is a site for monitoring comets. It's very handy for predicting when and where to best view various comets. Here's the site: Comet Observation Home Page. Lots of info there! According to this site, Comet NEAT (C/2001 Q4) will be closest to the Sun this coming (northern) spring. From my latitude it will be best visible in evening in early May low in the SSW sky. It might be around first magnitude. We'll see.

Comet NEAT (C/2001 V1) 3-1-2003

Same Comet NEAT (C/2001 V1) passing very near an active Sun in a SOHO image. Remember this? 2-18-2003.

P.S. Comets are named for their discoverer(s). If a comet is found by other means, the name reflects that. For instance, all these comets "NEAT" were discovered by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking program which is carried out at Palomar, California and Maui, Hawaii Observatories. Asteroid/planetoid buffs and Near-Earth-Object trackers will love their site! Near Earth Asteroid Tracking

And all those LINEAR comets? Yep, asteroid tracking program. This time it's MIT (with funding help from NASA and the USAF). The LINEAR Program.

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