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P.L. Lamy (LAS), I. Toth (LAS), H.A. Weaver (JHU), C. Delahodde (ESO), L. Jorda (MPAe), M.F. A'Hearn (U.Md.)
We report the successful detection of the nucleus of 13 short-period comets with the Hubble Space Telescope. One orbit was devoted to each comet and the observations were performed with the Planetary Camera and at least two filters (V and R) and up to four (B, V, R, I) for the brightest ones. Assuming spherical nuclei with a geometric albedo of 0.04 for the R band and a phase law of 0.04 mag/deg, we determined the following radii: 4P/Faye: 1.77~km; 10P/Tempel~2: 4.60~km; 17P/Holmes: 1.71~km; 37P/Forbes: 0.81~km; 44P/Reinmuth~2: 1.63~km; 50P/Arend: 0.95~km; 59P/Kearns-Kwee: 0.79~km; 63P/Wild~1: 1.46~km; 71P/Clark: 0.68~km; 84P/Giclas: 0.90~km; 106P/Schuster: 0.94~km; 112P/Urata-Niijima: 0.90~km; 114P/Wiseman-Skiff: 0.78~km. We also obtained the spectral reflectivities of those nuclei and of their coma and calculated the dust production rates.