Sky field in which comet Halley was observed

Sky field in which Comet Halley was observed with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory on March 6-8, 2003. 81 individual exposures with a total exposure time of 32284 sec (almost 9 hours) from three of the four 8.2-m telescopes were cleaned and combined to produce this composite photo, displaying numerous faint stars and galaxies in the field. The predicted motion of Comet Halley during the three nights is indicated by short red lines. The long straight lines at the top and to the right were caused by artificial satellites in orbit around the Earth that passed through the field during the exposure. The field measures 300 x 180 square arcseconds. North is up and East is left.