Comets Halley, G-Z seen in same photo.

Comet Giacobini-Zinner (G-Z), which on Sept. 11 became the first comet ever visited by a spacecraft (SN: 9/21/85, p. 180), and Comet Halley, to be visited next March by an international five-spacecraft fleet, appear together in this photograph taken Sept. 14 from southern California's Palomar Observatory.

The photo was taken by Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Eleanor Helin, using Palomar's 46-centimeter Schmidt telescope. The two comets appear less than 2 degress apart in the sky as seen from earth, about four times the diameter of the moon. G-Z, however, was only about 71.8 million kilometers away at the time of the photo and receding with each passing day, while Halley was about 384.4 million km away and coming closer. Seen north of the constellation Orion, G-Z appears as a fuzzy streak with a brightness of about magnitude 8, while Halley, larger but more distant, is at a much fainter magnitude 12. An arraw indicates each comet's direction of movement.

Also visible in the photo, just above the "a" in the would Halley, is a nebula designated NGC 2174.