Comet Hartley 2, officially designated 103P/Hartley, is a small periodic comet with an orbital period of 6.46 years. It was discovered by Malcolm Hartleyin 1986 at the Schmidt Telescope Unit in Siding Spring Australia.

Its diameter is estimated to be 1.2 to 1.6 km. It will be the subject of a flyby by the Deep Impact spacecraft on November 4, 2010, with a closest approach of 700 kilometers. This is part of the EPOXI mission.

This video is comprised of 22, 30-60 second frames taken at F/6.3 through a Celestron C-14 with an SBIG ST-9 CCD Camera. The frames were show from approximately 0200 UT (9:00PM Eastern Time) and span about 80 minutes. I captured the integrations with help from ATMoB member Todd Frase.

http://tinyurl.com/103P-Hartley

Enjoy!