  Comet 17P/Holmes underwent the largest cometary outburst in recorded history
on UT 2007 Oct. 23, releasing massive quantities of dust and gas. We used the
Canada-France-Hawaii telescope to obtain wide-field images of 17P/Holmes on 15
dates over a period of 3 months following the outburst and employ them here to
examine the subsequent activity of the nucleus and the nature of the ejecta
closest to the nucleus. Through aperture photometry we observed the in- ner
coma (within 2500 km of the nucleus) to fade from an apparent magnitude of 11.7
mag to 17.6 mag, corresponding to absolute magnitudes of 8.1 mag and 12.4 mag,
between UT 2007 Nov. 6 and 2008 Feb. 12. A second much smaller outburst
occurred on UT 2007 Nov. 12, three weeks after the original outburst,
suggesting that the nucleus remained unstable. The surface brightness profile
of the inner coma was consistently shallow relative to the expected
steady-state profile, and showed a persistent brightness enhancement within ~
5000 km of the nucleus. We propose that sublimating ice grains created an ice
grain halo around the nucleus, while fragmenting grains were responsible for
the shallow surface brightness profile.
