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Comet Holmes with Tail
Comet Holmes finally has a beautiful blue ion tail, as recorded in this deep telescopic image taken on November 4 by Ivan Eder near Budapest, Hungary. Pointing generally away from the Sun and also planet Earth, the comet's ion tail is seriously foreshortened by our extreme viewing angle. The comet's colors—a greenish coma and a blue tail—are caused by molecules in the tenuous gas, like C2 (green) and CO+ (blue), fluorescing in sunlight. The Hubble Space Telescope zoomed in on the comet core to see how the material is being expelled.