During the early morning of October 31, 2013, the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), mounted on the Subaru Telescope, captured images of the detailed structures of the envelopes of dust and gas (i.e., the comae) surrounding the nuclei of the comets ISON (C/2012 S1) and Lovejoy (C/2013 R1).
Figure 1: Optical image of the structures surrounding the nucleus of the Comet ISON, captured by FOCAS mounted on the Subaru Telescope. This image was taken in the early morning of Oct 31, 2013 (Hawaii time) in V-band (550 nm) with an exposure time of 5 seconds. The field of view is about 6 x 3 arcminutes. (Credit: NAOJ/Observation and data reduction by Dr. Masafumi Yagi [NAOJ])Figure 2: Optical image of the structures surrounding the nucleus of the Comet Lovejoy, captured by FOCAS mounted on the Subaru Telescope. This image was taken in the early morning of Oct 31, 2013 in V-band (550 nm) with an exposure time of 5 seconds. The field of view is about 6 x 3 arcminutes. The lower-left inset shows the structures around the nucleus after adjusting the contrast in the image. (Credit: NAOJ/Observation and data reduction by Dr. Masafumi Yagi [NAOJ])
