According to a news story on the NAOJ website:
At the time of this observation, at around 5:30 am on December 3, 2013 (Hawaii Standard Time), Comet Lovejoy was 50 million miles (80 million km) distant from Earth and 80 million miles (130 million km) away from the Sun.Comet Lovejoy is currently visible in the early morning sky as a naked-eye object in the northern hemisphere.
The entire image of comet Lovejoy was made with the Subaru Telescope's Suprime-Cam, which uses a mosaic of ten 2048 x 4096 CCDs covering a 34′ x 27′ field of view and a pixel scale of 0.2".
"Subaru Telescope offers a rare combination of large telescope aperture and a wide-field camera," said a member of the observation team, which included astronomers from Stony Brook University in New York, Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Johns Hopkins University, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. "This enabled us to capture a detailed look at the nucleus while also photogenically framing inner portions of Comet Lovejoy's impressive ion tail."
Read more about Lovejoy's journey through the inner solar system in this article by Bob King here.
Icy debris?????