Post-perihelion observations of comet 1P/Halley^*

V: r = 28.1 AU

¹ European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago 19, Chile
² Observatoire de Paris-Meudon - LESIA, 5 Place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon Cedex, France e-mail: Audrey.Delsanti@obspm.fr
³ Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai`i, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA e-mail: meech@ifa.hawaii.edu
⁴ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2, 85748 Garching-bei-München, Germany e-mail: rwest@eso.org

Corresponding author: O. Hainaut, ohainaut@eso.org

Received: 11 November 2003
Accepted: 18 December 2003

Abstract

Deep CCD observations have been performed simultaneously with the three 8.2 m Very Large Telescopes at Paranal, in the direction of comet 1P/Halley, on March 6–8, 2003. The comet, at heliocentric distance  AU, was convincingly detected (at ) on a composite of 32 284 s exposure, as a point-source located 1.4'' from the expected position. The object is also visible (at the  level) on independent per-night or per-instrument composites, confirming the reality of the object, and the match of the observed motion over 3 consecutive nights with the predicted motion of 1P/Halley guarantees that this cannot be another Solar System object. The magnitude of the object,  ± 0.13, is compatible with the average cross-section of the bare nucleus.