Conet 103P/Hartley 2 in the infrared by the WISE spacecraft. Click for larger. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

There are just 28 days to go before EPOXI flys past comet 103P/Hartley 2.  Before I forget, Hartley 2 may become a naked-eye comet before all is said and done.

The EPOXI spacecraft will pass just 435 miles (700 km) from the comet and will mark the fifth time a comet has been imaged close up.  The speed of the passing by will be 7.6 miles per second (12.3 km/sec) so hopefully things will go smoothly with the camera.

The spacecraft is closing the distance at about 607,000 miles per day or about 976,000 km per day so it’s a ways off yet but gaining fast.

The image at the top of the post is from the WISE spacecraft taken in the infrared back in May 2010, the tail you can see is just over a million miles long (1.8 million km).  You can read more about the comet and of course WISE here at the image source.

The image below is from the Hubble Space Telescope.  The blue color was added after the fact.  Originally the image was black and white and recorded overall brightness.  Essentially what they did was make a brightness map.  There is another version of same image (no graphics) at Hubblesite.

Brightness map of Hartley 2 by Hubble. Click for larger.