Sudden Size

NASA

Comet Hale-Bopp Arm Formation Animation
August 30, 1995

This animation is courtesy of Miguel Serra-Ricart from Teide Observatory. The images were taken by M.R. Kidger with the IAC80 Telescope (0.82m) pertaining to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in the Canary Islands, Spain.

This animation shows a series of processed images from August 25th, 27th and 28th which show the development of the spiral arm leaving the nucleus. ... The sequence shows how the base of the jet remains in a constant position over the three nights and does not rotate around the nucleus. The jet though changes significantly from night to night, wrapping further around the nucleus, moving slowly away and fading significantly.

European Southern Observatory

http://www.eso.org/
The Enormous Size of Comet Hale-Bopp
30 August 1995

This series of three photos of the unusual Comet Hale-Bopp demonstrates that the comet is much larger than thought so far. In fact, its nucleus is surrounded by a dust cloud that measures more than 2.5 million kilometres across. Note that because of the wide field they represent, each of the images is available in two sizes, the larger of which has considerably better resolution.