September 17, 1999
Comet Hale-Bopp's Double Nucleus
Oliver Hainaut who, along with
Halebopp.Com, led the debunking efforts concerning the so called "Saturn Like Object" following Comet Hale-Bopp (a controvery that lead to the deaths of 40 misguided souls) notified us recently that an ESO team working with ADONIS had apparently noted a double nucleus in Comet Hale-Bopp. PDF and HTML files on their observations are linked below:
http://www.geocities.com/ks3484/hale-bopp.pdf
http://aa.springer.de/papers/9349003/2300985/small.htm
http://www.sc.eso.org/~ohainaut/papers (# 12 on the list)
http://aa.springer.de/papers/9349003/2300985.pdf
Start Quote:
Adaptive Optics Observations of innermost Coma of C/1995 O1 - Are there
a "Hale and a Bopp?", by F.Marchis, H.Boehnhardt, O.R. Hainaut and D.
Le Mignant, A&A, in press.
Comet Hale-Bopp was observed with the Adaptive Optics system ADONIS on
the ESO 3.6m telescope at La Sill in Nov.1997 and Jan.1998. After processing
the images, the maximum peak of the coma presented a double feature. The
separation between the two components was ~0.2" in 97 and ~0,4" in 98. An
attractive scenario to explain this observation is that Hale Bopp actually
has a double nucleus.
Original Source: http://www.sipe.com
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