Context: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 .

Aims : 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 .

Methods : 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 .

Results : 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 \leq 1 km for an assumed 4 % albedo ; we estimate a \sim 6 \% albedo .
We measure a colour of ( V - R ) = 0.26 \pm 0.09 .

Conclusions :