Astroblog: Hubble Images of Comet 17/P Holmes

Hubble Images of Comet 17/P Holmes

Image Credit Hubble/NASA.

The Hubble Images of comet 17P/Holmes have been released. They look pretty cool, so head on over and have a look.

Comet Holme s, while not as beautiful as comet McNaught, is still pretty amazing. Over two weeks since it exploded into view, it is still quite bright, at least magnitude 3! The comet's coma is now bigger than the Sun! The history of comet Holmes is pretty interesting, David Strange recounts this history here.

Comet Holmes is getting pretty close to alpha Persii (Mirfak), and may be hard to distinguish with binoculars over the next few days.
I've uploaded a new printable PDF spotters map here.

Martin Mobberly has some fantastic images of Holmes near Mirfak here and here. Dave Kodama has a wonderful wide field image, with a very rich starfield. There is another fantastic group of images and an animation here.(yes, i know I use fantastic a lot,but I mean it). Reader TMO has a great series of timelapse movies here. A nice black and white shot is here. Bob Yen does some fantastic comet blogging from Baja Mexico. More images of the comet can be found at Spaceweather Gallery, and there a whole IceInSpace thread for Australian images.

In the bloggosphere, Dirty Skies experiences Comet Madness, DaveP gets to see comet Holmes, Tom sees comet Holmes, Top of the Lawn sees comet Holmes above the street lamps! Comet AL plays with some images and come up trumps!