I have an image of comet Hale/Bopp that appears to show a small bright spot near the comet! What could it be?

Hello Stuart, thanks for your photo.

I'll assume you used a commonly available telephoto lens. That would
give an image scale so that the brightest region in the picture is the
comet's inner coma.

The smaller second diffuse blob is then probably a clump of dust
particles recently blown off the surface of the solid nucleus inside
the inner coma. Comet Hale-Bopp has thrown off many rings and blobs
of dust, suggesting parts of its surface are inactive while others are
producing strong jets of material.

A more exciting though less likely possibility is that the smaller
brightness peak in your image might show a piece of solid nucleus
which has broken off the main comet and is now a small comet of its
own. If this is the case, you'll see the second peak stay about the
same size and brightness over the next couple of weeks. But if it's
only a dust cloud, it will spread out and fade into the rest of the
comet's tail within a few days.

You can find many, many other pictures of the comet on the web using a
search engine such as Alta Vista, http://www.altavista.digital.com.
It would be interesting to see whether any of the other people
photographing the comet has recorded the same event.

Best wishes,
-Neal.

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