Abstract
Halley's comet (1982 i) is now bright enough for broadband photometry by large infrared telescopes1–3. We report here on photometry of the comet in the B (0.44 µm), J (0.55 µm), V (1.25 µm) and K (2.2 µm) broadband filters during a time when the coma was very weak and presumed to contribute negligibly to the broadband photometry. The V – J and J – K colours suggest that the colour of the nucleus of Halley's comet is similar to that of the D-type asteroids, which in turn suggests that the surface of the nucleus is of albedo < 0.1.
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Cruikshank, D., Hartmann, W. & Tholen, D. Colour, albedo and nucleus size of Halley's comet. Nature 315, 122–124 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/315122a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/315122a0
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