Comet 17P/Holmes over 2 million km large now

Another clear evening yesterday, so another photo-shoot on comet 17P/Holmes. It is still an easy naked-eye object even from the center of Leiden town, visible as a small cloud next to alpha Persei.

Compared to two nights ago the brighter inner part of the coma has now elongated and bifurcated. Below image is a stack of 29 images of 5 seconds each, taken from a fixed tripod with the Canon Digital Ixus 400 at maximum zoom (3x):

(click image to enlarge)

The bifurcation is more readily apparent in this false-colour version of the image:




A wide-field view ( a stack of 9 images of 10 seconds each) taken with the Ixus:

(click image to enlarge)

Using ASTRORECORD I measured the coma size on the zoomed image to be 29.0' (Nov 17.97), corresponding to 2 million km in reality: