Fig. 3

In this image you can see the scale superimposed in the upper right hand corner. It says one hundred twenty thousand kilometers! North is up and in this image the nucleus and part of the great northern jet has been blacked out.

First, why has it been blacked out?

If it were to help us see the whole of the picture, because the nucleus' brightness is too bright, why not just use a filter?

The main point of using this picture is of course the immensity of the comet that it reflects. Simply put, the tail does not wag the dog. Measure across the base of the northern jet.

It's roughly .5 inch. According to the scale which they use, this equals approximately twenty five thousand kilometers. A jet this size could not emanate from a comet any less than twice that size, at the very least. This figure is again extremely conservative.

My earlier fears were reinforced... Hale Bopp is huge.

And one other note... What is the object that lies approximately 100,000 kilometers northwest of the "nucleus"? Also notice the area (approximately 4X the diameter of the object) that surrounds this dark object. Could this be suggestive of a magnetic field? (See Fig 6)

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