55P/Tempel-Tuttle image of the day

February 16, 1998.


Image comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle

Credit & Copyright: Francois Colas (Email: colas [at] bdl.fr), Pic du Midi Observatory, France.

Rapid temporal changes of the dust tail/jet. These images of comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle represent one week of observations for a research effort at Pic du Midi Observatory, France. The images were obtained with the 105cm telescope and a Thomson 7863 CCD camera with broadband filter 530-900 nm. The observer is Francois Colas, while the images were processed by Jean Lecacheux. This included the subtraction of a radial profile to show the jets. The images are scaled to correspond to a constant linear scale, while the comet was moving away from Earth. Note the varying length of the dust tail from day to day. Sometimes there is a hint of an ion tail.







Last updated: February 18, 1998
P. Jenniskens