I took this photo in the Sonoran desert south of Florence, Arizona on March 9, 1997, 4:45 a.m. MST. I used an Olympus OM-3 camera with a Zuiko (Olympus) 85mm f/2 lens. The exposure was 3 minutes at f/2 with my new star tracking motor drive that I made to photograph this comet. The film was Kodak EPH P1600 35mm professional slide film processed for ISO 1600. I then scanned the image with a Nikon Coolscan LS-10 and used Adobe Photoshop to apply mild color correction, but no sharpening. If you look carefully near the upper left corner of the image, you can see a reddish object. It is the North American nebula, a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas. It has roughly the shape of the North American continent (missing Alaska) with Mexico to the upper right of the nebula in this photo.
I have been watching this comet since 5 July 1996. At that time it was an extremely small "fuzzy star" near the constellation Scutum. As the months passed, the comet grew brighter but there was no tail, except for a fuzzy glow around the comet. In September, the comet developed a short broad fan shaped tail that pretty much stayed the same until the middle of December when the comet was too close to the sun to see. During the first week of January, the comet became visible again, this time with a narrower tail. Since then, I had been watching it from my house almost every morning and going out on overnight photo trips with my freind Joe Orman on the "new moon" weekends. This photograph is thea result of the last outing as of the time of this writing.
Click here to read Joe & Rick's Comet Hale-Bopp Observing Dairy.
Check out the prestigious NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day site for more astronomy pictures.
Updated: 25 May 1998