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Comet Hartley 2 Looms Large in the Sky

NASA's EPOXI mission took this image of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 2, 2010. The spacecraft will fly by the comet on Nov. 4, 2010. The white blob and the halo around it are the comet's outer cloud of gas and dust, called a coma.
PIA13566
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

Description

NASA's EPOXI mission took this image of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 2, 2010 from a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The spacecraft will fly by the comet on Nov. 4, 2010. The white blob and the halo around it are the comet's outer cloud of gas and dust, called a coma. At this distance, the spacecraft is capturing images with a resolution of about 23 kilometers/pixel (14 miles/pixel).