Comet Halley at 28 AU heliocentric distance

Faint, star-like image of Comet Halley (centre), observed with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory on March 6-8, 2003. 81 individual exposures from three of the four 8.2-m VLT telescopes with a total exposure time of about 9 hours were combined to show the magnitude 28.2 object. At this time, Comet Halley was about 4200 million km from the Sun (28.06 AU) and 4080 million km (27.26 AU) from the Earth. All images of stars and galaxies in the field were removed during the extensive image processing needed to produce this unique image. Due to the remaining, unavoidable "background noise", it is best to view the comet image from some distance. The field measures 60 x 40 arcsec 2 ; North is up and East is left.