Shoemaker-Levy_9_on_1994-05-17.png
Size of this preview:
800 × 242 pixels
.
Other resolutions:
320 × 97 pixels
|
640 × 193 pixels
|
1,024 × 310 pixels
|
2,775 × 839 pixels
.
Description Shoemaker-Levy 9 on 1994-05-17.png |
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 , taken on May 17, 1994, with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in wide field mode. When the comet was observed, its train of 21 icy fragments stretched across 1.1 million km (710 thousand miles) of space, or 3 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. This required 6 WFPC exposures spaced along the comet train to include all the nuclei. The image was taken in red light. The comet was approximately 660 million km (410 million miles) from Earth when the picture was taken, on a mid-July collision course with the gas giant planet Jupiter . |
||||
Date | |||||
Source | http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1994/26/image/c/ ( direct link ) | ||||
Author | NASA, ESA, and H. Weaver and E. Smith (STScI) | ||||
Permission
( Reusing this file ) |
|