  103P/Hartley 2 was selected as the target comet for the Deep Impact extended
mission, EPOXI, in October 2007. There have been no direct optical observations
of the nucleus of this comet, as it has always been highly active when
previously observed. We aimed to recover the comet near to aphelion, to a)
confirm that it had not broken up and was in the predicted position, b) to
provide astrometry and brightness information for mission planning, and c) to
continue the characterisation of the nucleus. We observed the comet at
heliocentric distances between 5.7 and 5.5 AU, using FORS2 at the VLT, at 4
epochs between May and July 2008. We performed VRI photometry on deep stacked
images to look for activity and measure the absolute magnitude and therefore
estimate the size of the nucleus. We recovered the comet near the expected
position, with a magnitude of m_R = 23.74 \pm 0.06 at the first epoch. The
comet had no visible coma, although comparison of the profile with a stellar
one showed that there was faint activity, or possibly a contribution to the
flux from the dust trail from previous activity. This activity appears to fade
at further epochs, implying that this is a continuation of activity past
aphelion from the previous apparition rather than an early start to activity
before the next perihelion. Our data imply a nucleus radius of \le 1 km for an
assumed 4% albedo; we estimate a ~6% albedo. We measure a colour of (V-R) = 0.
26 \pm 0.09.
