Image taken from the NTU telescope

These images are of the Comet Holmes. They were both taken with the 0.5m NTU telescope on 10 December, 2008. The image on the left is a grey scale image and the one on the right is a false colour image showing more detail.

Both these pictures are the result of a combination of three images (of 3 minute exposures) to give a better overview of the tail close to the comet’s head.

A comet is just a dirty snow ball that visits briefly from the outer parts of our solar system. When comets get closer to the Sun they start to melt away in the heat; this creates a glowing tail. Holmes had such a long tail that we could not see it all at once, not even in the image above, which is almost the size of a full Moon.

Sometimes the ice melts unevenly and the tail becomes brighter in certain regions than in others. Try finding these features in the tail on the false colour image.

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