Comet - Into the Nucleus

Periodic comet P/Swift-Tuttle observed with the 1.2m telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Spain in October and November 1992. (Data courtesy of Dr K Birkle, Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg). Irregularity of nucleus is indicative of the presence of jets in in the coma. See resolution scales 4 and 5 of the wavelet transform, where these jets can be clearly seen.

Commands used

The 512x512 image in FITS format (32-bit real) was wavelet transformed (à trous method), mr_transform -n 6 -x str0256ln.fits str0256 , and the output images translated to GIF in IDL, write_gif,'comets1.gif',bytscl(image(99:429,99:429))

To probe further

The Messenger, European Southern Observatory, No. 73, pp. 37--39, 1993.

Image and Data Analysis: The Multiscale Approach, J-L Starck, F Murtagh and A Bijaoui, Cambridge University Press, 1998.