"Anton Sherwood" <bro### [at] poboxcom> wrote in message
news:39A33B74.7E76CB93@pobox.com...
| Anton Sherwood wrote:
| > I haven't seen swirls like that in a comet's tail.
|
| Oops:  http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960319.html

Yeah, I had seen that one after your first reply when looking for comet
pictures to see how I was doing with my ray traced one.  Surprisingly, most
pictures I found were black and white and not too great.
Hey, you want to see a fantastic photograph of a comet though?

http://comets.amsmeteors.org/comets/lcomets/1995o1.html

Spectacular image of Hale-Bopp.  I just now found it.  I was thinking before
that only the dust tail could appear to swirl about from changes in the
ejection of material from the nucleus as it rotated to show a different side
to the sun.  Thought the ion tails of comets were generally straight and
featureless.  Boy was I wrong.
I'll probably try to mimic this Hale-Bopp photo most of all, it's so
visually appealing.  Just need to get a idea of what's in that saturated
white area the time exposure cleared out.  I saw Hale-Bopp through a small
4" scope so I guess it wasn't clumpy but did have some directional features
in the coma area.  I looked at some of those Halley space probe pictures
recently too; very fuzzy stuff.  Maybe I'll just see what happens.

Bob

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