Comet Hale-Bopp Comet Hale-Bopp


This image was taken on 18 Feb 97 at 10:16 UTC. The telescope was a 155mm f/7. The film was Fuji 400 Super G+ and the exposure was 10 minutes. Notice that the stars are slightly elongated: this is due to tracking the comet nucleus during the exposure. The comet, even in a 10 minute exposure, has moved with respect to the background of stars. The blue tail is ionized gas and the yellowish/greenish tail is dust. Image scanned from negative. (This images was used in the Washington Post!)

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