Black background dotted with stars and galaxies. The bright-white comet is in the upper right quadrant of the image, just to the upper right of center. Its tail is pointing toward the lower left corner.

A unique Hubble view of comet ISON

In this Hubble Space Telescope composite image taken in April 2013, the sun-approaching Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars. The icy visitor, with its long gossamer tail, appears to be swimming like a tadpole through a deep pond of celestial wonders. In this composite image, background stars and galaxies were separately photographed in red and yellow-green light. Because the comet moved between exposures relative to the background objects, its appearance was blurred. The blurred comet photo was replaced with a single, black-and-white exposure. The images were taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on April 30, 2013. This photo is one of the original images featured on ISONblog, a new online source offering analysis of Comet ISON by Hubble Space Telescope astronomers and staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA. Link: NASA Press release

Credits: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)