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Full Nucleus Rotation of Comet Hale-Bopp

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Full nucleus rotation !

Comet Hale-Bopp has now become bright enough to be observable during day-time! The good quality of the sky above Pic du Midi Observatory allowed us to follow the comet during an entire rotation of the nucleus, i.e. about 11.4 hours (see IAU Circ. 6560). This animation was made with CCD images obtained on February 28th between 3H50m and 15H35m UT with a Gunn-z (broad-band, near infra-red) filter. Several images (until 50 images) were centered and co-added in order to create the individual frames presented in this animation. There is about one frame every 10 minutes. We obtained a total of 1100 images during the whole observing run. The first and the last image are quite the same, the only difference is the different signal/noise ratios. In fact the animation "in loop" allows to see the perpetual evolution of the jet.

red_dot.gif Pic du Midi Animation (Animated GIF, 285K)

Scientific team : Laurent Jorda, Jean Lecacheux, François Colas and Pierre Laques

All the images were taken with the 105 cm telescope at Pic du Midi Observatory (Station de Planetologie des Pyrenees)

Comments can be sent to Francois Colas
Francois.Colas@bdl.fr
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