Comet Hale-Bopp

These Hubble Space Telescope pictures of comet Hale-Bopp show a remarkable 'pinwheel' pattern and a blob of free-flying debris near the nucleus. The bright clump of light along the spiral (above the nucleus, which is near the center of the frame) may be a piece of the comet's icy crust that was ejected into space by a combination of ice evaporation and the comet's rotation, and which then disintegrated into a bright cloud of particles.