Dust Morphology Of The Inner Coma Of C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)

Dust continuum imaging of comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) was carried out with the Swedish Vacuum Solar Telescope (SVST)on La Palma in April, 1997. Images were reduced according to standard procedure, aligned, averaged, navigated and enhanced with azimuthal renormalization, rotational derivative, temporal derivative and unsharp masking processing. The rotational period of the nucleus was determined to 11.5 h and the mean projected dust outflow velocity to 0.41 km s⁻¹. Shell envelopes in the sunward side of the coma were separated by a projected distance of ∼15 000–20 000 km and spiralling inwards towards smaller radii in the direction of local evening. Small scale inhomogeneities of size 1 000–2 000 km, interpreted as correlated with variations in dust emission activity, were seen at radii ≤20 000 km. Two overlapping shell systems with a relative lag angle of ∼55° were evident at the time. The north pole of the nucleus was directed towards the Earth. The dust emission pattern is very complex and may be due to several active areas. The shape of the incomplete spiral shell pattern indicates that the angle between the line-of-sight and the rotational axis of the nucleus was not large. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.