John's Nature Pictures john-pix.com

Comet Hyakutake


Comet Hyakutake was a spectacular comet as seen from earth. It was not real bright, but, since it was relatively close to earth its tail stretched half-way across the sky. Clearly visible in the tail is a 'disconnection event' caused by the comet cutting through a magnetic field line of the sun. For scale, you can see the upside-down Big Dipper in the left center. I took this with a 28mm lens. I designed and made my own hiss-drive equatorial platform to take this picture with, using a Celestron Comet Catcher as a guidescope.

Picture #074 -  copyright © 1996 by John Sherman



          

























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