Comet Hale-Bopp, at a distance of nearly 2,000 million kilometres from the Sun

Comet Hale-Bopp, still active at a distance of nearly 2,000 million kilometres from the Sun. The photo is a colour composite of several exposures in different wavebands, obtained with the Wide-Field Imager (WFI) camera at the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at the La Silla Observatory. Despite the very large distance from the Sun, the comet is still "active" — it continues to lose material, as demonstrated by the curved jet, and also possesses an enormous coma. The broad, fan-shaped extension in the tail direction (to the upper left) measures at least 2 million kilometres.