The asymetric shape of the coma of comet Hyakutake

This image shows a combined image, based on 24 R-frames with a total exposure of 48 seconds. It shows the asymmetric shape of the coma contours (isophotes), indicating the presence of much structural detail in the coma. 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.