Halley's Comet Imaged As Transneptunian Object

An anonymous reader writes "The European Space Observatory has imaged Halley's Comet at the farthest point (past Neptune) in which such a 10-kilometer diameter iceball has ever been observed. To image a comet as a raven-black object, without its bright dust tail (coma), is equivalent to seeing a lump of coal at the distance between the Earth's poles and to do so in the evening twilight. The last gasp seen from Halley's Comet was 1991, when a gigantic explosion happened, providing it with an expanding, extensive cloud of dust for several months. It is not known whether this event was caused by a collision with an unknown piece of rock or by internal processes (a last 'sigh' on the way out). Halley has an orbital period just over 76 years and will return in 2062."

Comments

In case of slashdotting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the image, in case it gets /.'ed:

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. , . . . . (the 2nd one)
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Re:In case of slashdotting...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

It's morse code for "So long and thanks for all the fish."

The real reason for the telescope

[KingRob]

ESA's sekret plan is to point that baby at the Apollo landing site and prove once and for all, those lying Amerikanischer Schweinhund never made it to the moon!

Re:I saw it last time

[RobertB-DC]

In the end, I got a look at Mars, it looked like this:

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except it was pink.

I'm happy to report that I was able to run your image through a high-tech image-enhancement system. To further aid in visualization, the edge definition has been increased as well.

Here is the new image:

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Hope this helps!