esahubble_opo9322c October 18th, 1993
Credit: Dr. H. A. Weaver and Mr. T. E. Smith, STScI NASA/ESA
This is an enlargement of a NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the "brightest nucleus" in a string of approximately 20 objects that comprise comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9. The comet is hurtling toward a July I994 collision with the giant planet Jupiter. Hubble's high resolution shows that this bright region is actually a group of at least four separate pieces. The HST images allow for the best separation of the individual nuclei and their surrounding halo of dust (comae), which results in a better estimate of the nuclear sizes.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9322c/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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