ESO Movie 05: The Tails of Comet Halley

Comet Halley, the most famous of all comets, passed the Earth in 1986. At that time it was the object of intensive observations by means of space probes and ground-based telescopes.

This film describes some of the ground-based observations of the comet from 1982 to 1990, in particular those in the spring of 1986. It also contains a spectacular time-lapse sequence of more than 800 wide-field images showing the rapid changes of the comets ion tails.