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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."
That's human curiosity, what allowed us to survive and evolve through ages. Give us some knowledge buried under a giant rock and we'll put huge efforts in removing that rock.
The same applies to the comet's tail: there's a chance to learn something by making observations without the comet tail hiding things.
The spot was discovered by Robert Hooke in 1664. The spot is HUGE (large enough to hold to Earths) and back in the 15'th centurty it was much brighter.
Really? You have some idea of of how the GRS appeared 200 years before Hooke (in the mid seventeenth century) inferred the rotational period of Jupiter? The earliest definitive observations of the GRS, btw, are those of Heinrich Schwabe (1831)