Notes
on the appearance of the inner coma: 2008 Feb 11. Richard Miles
Deep
image of the pseudo-nucleus of 17P/Holmes comprising 2.6 hours total
integration made this evening under good seeing conditions (2.0 arcsec).
Image A is a normally-stretched stack of 625 images and the elongated nature along
PA 80 is apparent.
Image
B was generated by applying a rotational gradient filter of 20 deg to image A using IRIS software and then resampling
at x2 scale. You can now see the material aligned roughly along PA 80. It
extends either side of the nucleus position, which corresponds to the position
of the black dot set in a short vertical grey line. The band of material
subtends about 40 arcsec in all and tends to fan
outwards in the east (following) direction. To the west (preceding) of the
nucleus position the material is less substantial but is more condensed and is
directed in PA 250 approx.
Maybe someone should take a look using the HST, or Keck II in the J- or H- band.
Richard
Miles
Golden
Hill Obs. – MPC J77