Here is a collection of photos, articles, letters and links regarding the Comet Hale-Bopp

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These two beautiful photos, scanned by Art from photographs provided by Evelyn Erickson in Anchorage, Alaska

This was taken using a refractor that I piggy backed on my Meade 2120 LX-5 at the Joshua Tree National Monument, 5 minute exposure taken thru an Orion short tube refractor. Film was Fiji 400G. -- Steve Hardesty

This picture of Hale-Bopp was taken on 3-7-97 through a 135mm f2.8 telephoto lens, film used was kodak PJM exposure was 5 min. -- Vincent D Baker

This picture was taken through my Celestron C-8 with a Celestron f/6.3 reducer/corrector. It was taken on the morning of 24 Feb 97 at 0530 on Polariod one step 200 speed film for two minutes. -- Frank Pino from Washington

This picture was taken on 27 Feb 97 at 0525 on Kodak Royal Gold 1000 speed film for 15 seconds, through my 10" Parks at f/6. -- Frank Pino from Washington

Photo of comet Hale-Bopp took on 2-14-97 through a Televue Genesis APO 100mm refractor telescope, film used was Kodak PJM exposed for 5 min. Submitted by Vincent D Baker.

This picture was taken by Chester Roistacher (pronounced ROY-stacker) on 1/31/97 at 5 AM at Anza-Borrego State Park (southern California desert) using a 5 minute exposure at the prime focus of a Meade LX-200 telescope using 1600 ASA Fuji film.
Submitted by BA Merrill

The Comet Hale-Bopp early when it was way out, shortly after discovery.

A larger view of the comet when it first appeared.

By Alan Fitzsimmons and Martin Cartwright (Queen's University of Belfast). A jpeg image of Hale-Bopp obtained on 25th August using the 1m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma using the cassegrain CCD camera plus R-band filter. The image is centered on the nucleus and is 19 arcsec by 19 arcsec. The spiral jet of material appears to extend over 5 arcsec from the nucleus, or over 25,000 km at the distance of the comet. This image may be freely used providing credit is given Alan Fitzsimmons & Martin Cartwright/Queen's University of Belfast.

Related Web Page Links

• 3/22/97 - NASA's Recent Comet Images
• 3/22/97 - Another JPL Comet Hale-Bopp Home Page
• 3/20/97 - Hale-Bopp Six-Pack? from HB Magazine
• Albuquerque Journal's Comet Hale-Bopp Page
• The Comet Hale-Bopp Home Page by Russel Sipe
• European Southern Observatory's Comet Hale-Bopp Page
• Automated Telescopes
• Vodniza/Alonso Image of Comet Hale-Bopp
• Bopp 'til you Drop!
• Comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1) : New Image
• NASA Page -- Information on Hale-Bopp for the Non-Astronomer.
• Nasa Comet WWW Page. More pictures about comets can be viewed from this page.
• SKY Online's Comet Page

NASA Release

FOR RELEASE: October 10, 1995

PHOTO RELEASE NO.: STScI-PRC95-41

HUBBLE SEES MATERIAL EJECTED FROM COMET HALE-BOPP

These NASA Hubble Space Telescope pictures of comet Hale-Bopp show a remarkable "pinwheel" pattern and a blob of free-flying debris near the nucleus. The bright clump of light along the spiral (above the nucleus, which is near the center of the frame) may be a piece of the comet's icy crust that was ejected into space by a combination of ice evaporation and the comet's rotation, and which then disintegrated into a bright cloud of particles.

Although the "blob" is about 3.5 times fainter than the brightest portion at the nucleus, the lump appears brighter because it covers a larger area. The debris follows a spiral pattern outward because the solid nucleus is rotating like a lawn sprinkler, completing a single rotation about once per week.

Ground-based observations conducted over the past two months have documented at least two separate episodes of jet and pinwheel formation and fading. By coincidence, the first Hubble images of Hale-Bopp, taken on September 26, 1995, immediately followed one of these outbursts and allow researchers to examine it at unprecedented detail. For the first time they see a clear separation between the nucleus and some of the debris being shed. By putting together information from the Hubble images and those taken during the recent outburst using the 82 cm telescope of the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain), astronomers find that the debris is moving away from the nucleus at a speed (projected on the sky) of about 68 miles per hour (109 kilometers per hour).

The Hubble observations will be used to determine if Hale-Bopp is really a giant comet or rather a more moderate-sized object whose current activity is driven by outgassing from a very volatile ice which will "burn out" over the next year. Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered on July 23, 1995 by amateur astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. Though this comet is still well outside the orbit of Jupiter (almost 600 million miles, or one billion kilometers from Earth) it looks surprisingly bright, fueling predictions that it could become the brightest comet of the century in early 1997.

The full-field picture on the left, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (in WF mode), shows the comet against a stellar backdrop in the constellation Sagittarius. The stars are streaked due to a combination of Hubble's orbital motion and its tracking of the nucleus, which is now falling toward the Sun at 33,800 miles per hour (54,000 km/hr). In the close-up picture on the right, the stars have been subtracted through image processing. Each picture element is nearly 300 miles (480 km) across at the comet's distance. In this false color scale the faintest regions are black, the brightest regions are white, and intermediate intensities are represented by different levels of red.

Even more detailed Hubble images will be taken with the Planetary Camera in late October to follow the further evolution of the spiral, look for more outbursts, place limits on the size of the nucleus, and use spectroscopy to study the enigmatic comet's chemical composition.

Credit: H.A. Weaver (Applied Research Corp.), P.D. Feldman (The Johns Hopkins University), and NASA

Image files in GIF and JPEG format may be accessed on Internet via anonymous ftp from ftp.stsci.edu in /pubinfo. The same images are available via World Wide Web from URL http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html, or via links in http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html