NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

Comet Hale-Bopp Update

Will comet Hale-Bopp [ http://www.halebopp…] become the brightest comet of the Century in early 1997? Since its discovery in July [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] this year, Hale-Bopp [ http://encke.jpl.na…] has caused much speculation. Even though it is still beyond the orbit of Jupiter it is astonishingly bright and expected to get much brighter as it plunges inward, toward the Sun. In this latest Hubble Space Telescope image [ http://www.stsci.ed…] a bright clump of material (above center) has apparently been ejected by evaporation and the rotation of the icy nucleus [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] (below center). Astronomers are using this and other observations to try to figure out if Hale-Bopp is really a giant comet or a smaller object which will fizzle out sooner than expected as it approaches the Sun.

NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/], HST [ http://www.stsci.ed…], H.A. Weaver (ARC [ http://www.arcorp.c…]) and P.D. Feldman (JHU [ http://www.jhu.edu/…]).

Jupiter

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Sun

Jupiter

comet

Comet Hale-Bopp

Hale-Bopp Comet

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap951030