Comet Hale-Bopp

The image shows a photographically enhanced image of the comet. In this process, the contrast has been greatly increased so that even very faint areas of the diffuse coma become visible. The comet now appears as a roughly circular, dark object in the front of myriads of stars in this sky area. Its angular size is at least 5 arcminutes, much larger than on the direct reproduction (eso9521a). There also seems to be a very faint extension towards East (left).