Inner coma imaging of Comet Levy (1990c) with the Hubble Space Telescope

HST observations of Comet Levy at geocentric and heliocentric distances of about 1 AU show a highly asymmetrical coma in which the sunward-facing hemisphere is brighter than the tailward one by a factor of 2; this is in keeping with dayside volatile sublimation. Radial brightness profiles perpendicular to the sun-comet line are found to be highly symmetric about the nucleus. Detailed image analysis reveals indications of a hemispherical dust arc which propagates through the coma at an average projected velocity of about 0.16 km/sec. It is suggested that periodic occurrences of such dust arcs could account for the temporal variability in IUE continuum photometry.