In order to better show the interesting features, they are all reproduced in false colours. The nominal angular resolution, as indicated by the seeing, was about 110 kilometres projected at the distance of the comet. Instead, the NTT was set to perform blind tracking at the rate of the cometary motion. During each exposure, i.e. in 2 seconds, the comet moved 0.5 arcsec in the sky. The advantage of using a large telescope like the NTT for this type of observation is not only its intrinsically good imaging quality, but in particular that enough light to show even faint details may be collected in very short time, thereby avoiding additional image smearing because of the motion during the exposure.
North is up and East is to the left.
The distance between the two components of a close double star, best seen in the upper right part of the image, is 1.9 arcsec. The multiple images of the same star is caused by the combination of several frames - this also shows the comet's very large rate of motion. They have been produced by subtracting the corresponding radially averaged frames, thus leaving only asymmetrical features behind. The field shown in these frames is 60 x 60 arcsec, i.e. about 10,000 km square at the distance of the comet. Strong dust jets are also visible.