English: The positive image shown here has been reproduced from a 2-min exposure with the DFOSC instrument through a B (blue) filter on August 11, 1998 at 23:40 UT. This is a 120-sec exposure through B-filtre with DFOSC on Danish 1.54-m telescope. Only a few cosmetic corrections. The original frame has 1911 x 1911 pixels which corresponds to 12.9 x 12.9 arcmin on the sky. North is up, East to the left. The coma diameter is at least 6 arcmin and is almost spherical, with a slight asymmetry on the tailside. A very thin and quite faint plasma-tail points in the lower left direction (position angle = 117° = "8 o'clock"), which is most likely close to the radial direction opposite to the Sun (but this can only be confirmed when a first orbit has been computed). The visible plasma tail extends at least 6.5 arcmin (beyond the field of view) and is produced by the emission of light from CO + (carbon monoxide ions) originating from sublimating ice of the cometary nucleus. The presence of this tail indicates that the comet is probably less than 1.5 AU (about 225 million km) from the Sun.