It was a grand and wonderful sight, for the comet now extended the extraordinary distance of

one-third of the heavens, the nucleus being, perhaps, about the [brightness] of the planet Venus.
J. EWART

ON THE

GREAT COMET

OF

ELESCOPIC comets are more common than

Coming half a given distance closer means, on averfull Moons. We get roughly two dozen a year,
age, becoming eight times brighter.
and often two or three are within range of large
The second important consideration is intrinsic
amateur instruments at a time. Far less frequent
brightness. If viewed at a distance of 1 a.u. from both
are naked-eye comets, those brighter than about
the Sun and Earth, an average comet would appear to
4th magnitude; these appear perhaps once in three
be magnitude 6.5. Under these same conditions (which
years. However, this article is about the rarest class of
define such objects absolute magnitude), much-fainter
comets the so-called great comets that become
periodic comets like 2P/Encke would be no brighter
bright enough to capture the publics attention.
than magnitude 11. Great comets, on the other hand,
On average, about one of these spectacles presents
are intrinsically often 10, 20, and sometimes even 100
itself each decade. But since they arrive at random, the
times more luminous than their typical siblings. The
interval between consecutive brilliant comets has been
brightest ones on record (those of 1402 and 1882) had
as brief as a few months or as dishearteningly long as
absolute magnitudes on the order of 0. Given such in60 years. This randomness occasiontrinsic brilliance, these objects need
B Y J O H N E . B O R T L E not approach Earth very closely to
ally results in periods of seemingly
low and high activity, with the most recent examples
produce a fine display. And those with perihelia inside
of the latter being 1853 82 and 195776.
1 a.u. are virtually guaranteed to be spectacular.
Just what makes great comets great and why are
Finally, the comets viewing geometry with respect
they such rarities? The quote that prefaces this article
to Earth must allow us a favorable perspective. A
has surely answered the first question. Great comets
comet that stays perpetually lost in twilight on the far
are those whose brilliance matches or exceeds the
side of the Sun can hardly become a striking sight.
brightest stars or even, in some cases, Jupiter and Venus.
Rather, the closer it comes to Earth, the better the
A few great comets are recorded to have briefly (when
show is likely to be. This final consideration may
next to the Sun in daytime) surpassed the brightness
somewhat obviate the first two requirements. An averof the full Moon by nearly a hundredfold! Magnitude,
age comet one with neither a small perihelion dishowever, is not the only criterion for greatness. The
tance nor an unusually high intrinsic brightness

length and brightness

PUNCTUATING THE PAGES OF HISTORY LIKE passing exceptionally
close to Earth may beof a comets tail are
also influential (S&T:
BOOKMARKS, GREAT COMETS HAVE LONG come a radiant wonder with a luminous
July 1996, page 31).
The question of rari- INSPIRED AWE, FEAR, AND ADMIRATION. tail spanning scores of
degrees. Comet
ty is another story. The
Hyakutake last March was a fine example.
appearance of a great comet in the heavens generally
requires that three separate factors conspire: a relaWhen the conditions are met, in whatever combinatively small perihelion distance, higher-than-average
tion, the result is a celestial event that may be talked
intrinsic brightness, and favorable observing geometry
about for generations. Much like a total solar eclipse,
relative to Earth.
the beauty and grandeur of a great comet is difficult
The first of these factors depends solely on the
to communicate and must be personally experienced.
comets orbit. To have any hope of spectacular developNevertheless, in what follows I will attempt to convey
ment the object must venture reasonably close to the
some small part of this awe-inspiring phenomenon.
Sun. Around this time a vast reserve of its volatile ices
GREAT COMETS OF THE PAST
is vaporized by solar heating; this releases trapped
Since 1801 about 20 of the many hundreds of
dust to form the brightest component of the comets
comets that have traversed the inner solar system deglorious coma and tail.
served the title of great comet. Here, in a bakers
Historically, no great comet has had a perihelion bedozen of thumbnail sketches, are the most memorable.
yond 1.3 astronomical units, yet very rarely do comets,
Great Comet of 1811. This was the comet referred
big or small, pass much closer than about 0.5 a.u. to
to by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace and long associatour star. The closeness of approach to the Sun is critied by Europeans with the turmoil of the period. Uncal, because the average comets brightness follows an
like most great comets, its discovery came long before
inverse third-power law relative to its solar distance.
44

Sky & Telescope January 1997

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

1843

Comet Hyakutake, C/1996 B2, earned the title Great Comet

of 1996 in the minds of many watchers when it flew only 0.1
astronomical unit by Earth and blazed in the spring sky at magnitude 0. Philipp Keller and Georg Schmidbauer in Wiesenfelden,
Germany, obtained this exquisite portrait of Hyakutake as it
neared the Sun on April 16th. They used a homemade 16-inch f/2
Schmidt camera and hypered Kodak Technical Pan 4415 film.

it reached greatest brightness, and much of the civilized world eagerly awaited its display.
As the comet neared perihelion (at nearly 1 a.u.), it
was a circumpolar object visible from dusk until dawn.
During September and October it shone with the brilliance of a zero- or 1st-magnitude star as it swept an
arc from Ursa Major to Hercules. Bright twin tails
one straight, the other strongly curved emanated
from the comets head and pointed northward. Each
was about 25 long; the curved one was some 7 wide.
The comet was visible to the naked eye for about nine
months, a record that has yet to be surpassed.
Great March Comet of 1843. When first noticed
around late February, this comet was just days from its
closest approach to the Sun. Not until weeks later,
when a reliable orbit was calculated, did astronomers
The Great March Comet of 1843 skimmed a mere 120,000
kilometers from the Suns surface at perihelion. This
drawing by Charles Piazzi Smyth at the Cape of Good
Hope in South Africa suggests the comet became so
bright after perihelion that its reflection could be seen
in the sea. When at its greatest brilliance, the comet was
visible only from southerly latitudes.

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

January 1997 Sky & Telescope

45

realize that the object had skimmed past

the Suns surface by just 120,000 kilometers, less than a tenth of the solar diameter. For a few brief hours on February
28th it had outshone any comet seen in
the preceding seven centuries. Burning
in the daytime sky like a brilliant, tailed
star less than 1 from the limb of the
Sun, the comets magnitude may have
reached 17 more than 60 times
brighter than the full Moon.
Church records, the logbooks of farflung sailing ships, and personal diaries
included entries about the radiant, dagger-shaped object seen near the Sun that
day. The last time a comet was prominently seen this close to the Sun was in
A.D. 1106.
Following its fiery brush with the Sun,
the comet shifted into the evening sky.
Projecting from a head that matched
Jupiter in brightness was a dense, luminous tail unrivaled by any previously
recorded. Straight as an arrow, this appendage grew daily, attaining a length of
68 three weeks after perihelion. Although not the longest in apparent
length, the tail nonetheless holds the rec-

ord for actual extent; it is estimated to

have stretched 300 million km (2 a.u.)
across the inner solar system.
Comet Donati, C/1858 L1 (1858 VI).
Said by many to have been the perfect
comet from the aspect of beauty, Giovanni Battista Donatis find was at its
best in early October. Telescopic views
revealed wondrous structures within the
coma. The stellar pseudonucleus was surrounded by what looked like a miniature
Fourth of July pinwheel, with ghostly
spokes or spiral jets that changed alignment from night to night. Behind the
pseudonucleus lay a distinct dark lane
seemingly void of cometary material.
The view with the unaided eye was no
less impressive. Gliding from Ursa
Major through Botes, Corona Borealis,
and Hercules on cool autumn evenings,
the comets head blazed between magnitude 0 and 1. Behind it trailed a magnificent, scimitar-shaped tail that some
observers traced more than a third of
the way across the heavens.
Great Comet of 1861. Although it had
been detected by Southern Hemisphere
observers weeks earlier, word of this

The head of the Great Comet of 1861 exhibited parabolic envelopes and an intensely bright sunward hemisphere. Warren de la Rue made this drawing with a
13-inch refractor.

[From] 12:55 to 1:15 p.m. . . . using the side of the house and chimney to screen the direct rays of the Sun,
I was able to pick up the comet through binoculars [when it was] about 1.6 away from the Suns edge. Will
other astronomers believe this?
J. F. SKJELLERUP ON COMET SKJELLERUP-MARISTANY, 1927

George P. Bond sketched this close-up of

Donatis head with Harvard College Observatorys 15-inch refractor on September 29, 1858. Note the bright parabolic
hoods around the small, sharp, pseudonucleus, which appears to cast a long, black
shadow into the tail.

46

Sky & Telescope January 1997

grand celestial wanderer had not yet

reached Europe when it suddenly appeared out of the morning twilight in late
June. During this time the comets head
was visible through telescopes in daylight and was said to exceed any star or
planet in brightness, save perhaps Venus
when at its peak. The comets luminosity
and grandeur were such that one of the
first Englishmen to spot it mistook its
head and rays for the rising Moon!
On June 30th the Earth passed either
through or exceedingly near the comets
tail. The tail at that time appeared to extend from near Beta Aurigae (where the
comets head was situated) across the
north polar regions of the sky and down
into Ophiuchus a distance of 120!
Five days later it could still be traced for
80 to 90, dwindling to about 30 by
July 12th. By then the head glowed as a
3rd-magnitude star.
Great September Comet of 1882. If a
single object could incorporate all the
attributes of great comets, it would certainly be this one. Discovered just days
before reaching perihelion, the comet
plunged deep into the Suns corona and
came within 430,000 km of the solar surface. During this near-kamikaze dive the
1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

comet grew 10 times brighter each day.

On September 16th and 17th it was an
obvious naked- eye object next to the
blazing midday Sun.
At the Cape Observatory in South
Africa, the comet was followed telescopically right up to the moment it began
transiting the solar disk. Estimates of
the comets peak brightness, which occurred a few hours later, ranged up to
magnitude 18.
The nucleus of the comet fragmented
around perihelion so that during early
October astronomers noted five or more
separate nuclei lined up in a straight
line. (Nearly a millennium from now the
surviving nuclei will return to the inner
solar system as independent sun-grazing
comets.) The tail, which attained a maximum length of about 30 in late October, was still some 15 long in mid-January 1883, while the head remained a
naked-eye object well into February.
Daylight Comet of 1910. Since 1901
only two great comets have received
names other than those of their discoverers. The first of these, the Daylight
Comet of 1910 (also known as the Great
January Comet) was by far the most impressive. Owing to its initial brightness, it

was independently discovered by many

people in the Southern Hemisphere;
identifying a single original discoverer
proved quite impossible.
The first individuals known to have
spied the comet were a group of South
African diamond miners just completing
their shift. The comet then was already
very bright (about magnitude 2) and
obvious to the unaided eye in the growing morning twilight. On January 17th
Robert Innes of the Cape Observatory
became the first astronomer to see it; the
comet by that time was within 18 million
km of the Sun and plainly visible just 4
west of the blazing orb. Most observers
judged the comet to be brighter than
Venus, making it at least magnitude 5.
The comets rapid northeastward motion quickly carried it into the evening
sky. Residents of midnorthern latitudes
had a truly ringside view from January
20th onward. In the growing darkness
each night they could see the comets
1st-magnitude, yellowish orange head
against the purplish twilight glow. From
it issued a prodigious shaft of milky
light that towered 50 or more above
the horizon, its extremities melting into
the soft haze of the zodiacal light.
Had not the more famous Halleys
Comet arrived just a few months later,
the Daylight Comet of 1910 would surely have been remembered as the finest
of the first half of the 20th century.
(Comet Halley was definitely the lesser
of the two. In fact, when Halley returned in 1985 86, many elderly peoples accounts of seeing its previous return clearly referred to the Daylight
Comet instead.)
Comet Skjellerup-Maristany, C/1927
X1 (1927 IX). What must the thrill be
like to discover the brightest comet in
nearly three generations? Amateur astronomers J. F. Skjellerup and Maristany
could answer that question. The object
they independently found in early December from Melbourne, Australia, and
La Plata, Argentina, respectively, rendezvoused with the Sun on the 17th, its
perihelion point being less than half of
Mercurys average heliocentric distance.
For a few days around this date small
binoculars or even unaided eyes were
sufficient to reveal the comet in broad
daylight just 2 from the Sun. The magnitude 6 coma burned with an intense,
unearthly yellow light that spectroscopes later identified as the emission
lines of sodium.
Following closest approach to the
Sun, Comet Skjellerup-Maristany hovered in twilight for several weeks, its
great perihelion brightness steadily wan-

Comet Donati looms above the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on October 4, 1858, as
depicted in the 1877 edition of Amde Guillemins Le Ciel. One of the most beautiful
and best observed comets of the 19th century, Donati passed in front of Arcturus (the
bright star to its left) the following evening.

ing. Only during the last days of the

year could observers catch a glimpse of
what earlier must have been a truly magnificent tail. Between December 29th
and January 3rd a handful of far-southern observers recorded a ghostly finger
of light projecting out of the predawn
glow in the east. At least 35 in length, it
was all that remained of the comets
final glory.
The Eclipse Comet, C/1948 V1 (1948
XI). As the Suns disk turned into an
ever-narrowing crescent in the sky above
the East African plains on November
1st, a handful of astronomers huddled

quietly around their cameras and instruments waiting for totality. When the last
spark of sunlight was extinguished, an
unexpected celestial spectacle was revealed. Mingling with the diaphanous
coronal streamers was a comet with a
long, curving tail and a head more resplendent than Jupiter. Humankind had
its first glimpse of the great Eclipse
Comet.
Three days passed before this surprise
visitor was seen again, but discovery reports came thick and fast as the dazzling
comet moved into the morning sky.
Early estimates of its brightness ranged

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

January 1997 Sky & Telescope

47

from the brilliance of Venus to a more

conservative 1st magnitude. Regardless
of this imprecision, the comet was an
extremely impressive sight with a bright
tail that, according to at least one observer, coursed across 30 of sky. As is
often the case, such splendor was shortlived. By the end of November the
comet had dimmed to 4th magnitude as
it receded rapidly from the Sun and
Earth.
Had the Eclipse Comet graced northern skies it would undoubtedly be remembered as one of the finest of the
century. But its southerly declination
largely hid it from the United States and
Europe, condemning it to undeserved
obscurity.
Comet Arend-Roland, C/1956 R1
(1957 III). Found by Belgian astronomers
Silvain Arend and Georges Roland at
Uccle Observatory in mid-September
1956, this comet elicited as much preliminary excitement as comets Kohoutek
and Austin would decades later. ArendRolands perihelion was still eight months
away, but rumors of an impending great
comet circulated far and wide.
Fortunately, Arend-Roland largely

The great Sun-grazing comet Ikeya-Seki

as photographed by Bradford A. Smith at
dawn on October 31, 1965, from New Mexico State University Observatory. Ikeya-Seki
was one of the most brilliant in history,
being visible with the unaided eye in full
daylight.

48

Sky & Telescope January 1997

lived up to advance billing when it

rounded the Sun on April 8, 1957. The
Northern Hemisphere had not witnessed
a spectacular comet since 1910, making
Arend-Rolands display that much more
impressive. Toward the end of April it
hung ominously in the northwestern
evening sky, a brightly glowing specter
for all to see. The head equaled the light
of a zero-magnitude star, but it was the
comets tails that stole the show. The
main tail was some 30 long straight,
fairly broad, and pointing toward Polaris.
The comet also exhibited an antitail the
likes of which had never been seen. This
spike of light stretched up to 15 directly
Sunward! The phenomenon lasted less
than a week but was the talk of the astronomical community for many months.
In time it was determined that the sunward antitail was an illusion caused by
perspective; the tail was actually a wide,
thin sheet of fine particles in the plane of
the comets orbit that, by fortuitous circumstance, was viewed edge on. In early
May the comet, still between 2nd and 3rd
magnitude, remained visible all night, a
circumpolar luminary wheeling around
Polaris.
Comet Ikeya-Seki, C/1965 S1 (1965
VIII). In the predawn hours of September 18th Japanese amateurs, Kaoru Ikeya
and Tsutomu Seki independently spotted
a new telescopic comet low in the southeast. The first reliable orbital elements
indicated that on October 21st the comet
would pass a mere 450,000 km above the
Suns photosphere, in the process probably becoming the brightest comet of the
20th century. This announcement was
greeted with some disbelief. How could
a small, fragile, dirty snowball withstand
such an inferno?
But skepticism turned to awe by midOctober as reports of the comets daytime visibility mounted. The most astonishing originated from Japan, where
Comet Ikeya-Seki reached perihelion
near local noon. Observers there reported the comet briefly outshone the full
Moon by more than 60 times (magnitude 17). With the possible exception
of the Great March Comet of 1843 and
its September 1882 counterpart, this was
the brightest comet seen in almost a
thousand years.

The 1970s began with a bang as Comet

Bennett raced toward the Sun during
the opening days of the decade. This 15minute exposure was made on March 11
12 using the 24-inch f/3.5 Curtis Schmidt
camera at Cerro Tololo, Chile. The field
is 212 wide, with south to the right. University of Michigan photograph.

The question of whether it would survive perihelion was answered one chilly
dawn in late October. Like a searchlight
beam the comets tail rose out of the
east. It outshone the Milky Way in surface brightness and spanned 25 to 30 by
early November. Although the celestial
show rapidly waned for northern observers, the comets tail remained distinct to the naked eye for weeks in Australia and South Africa.
Comet Bennett, C/1969 Y1 (1970 II).
It is the fate of nearly all great comets to
squander their peak displays when situated in the netherworld of twilight. Only
rarely can a grand visitor be viewed when
well above the obscuring horizon mists.
The object discovered by John Bennett in
the closing days of 1969 was one of these.
Discovered at magnitude 8.5 in the
far-southern sky, Bennetts comet grew to
the threshold of naked-eye visibility in
early February 1970. By mid-March the
comet shone at 2nd magnitude with a 10
tail, just as its orbital geometry brought it
from the southern skies to midnorthern
visibility. Eventually shining with the light
of a zero-magnitude star and standing

Some 18 minutes before the Sun was to set, my 10 50 binoculars

could easily show the comets brilliant, magnitude 3 head and a full
degree of tail projected against the deep blue afternoon sky, despite its
being at an elongation of only 7 from that great luminary.
JOHN BORTLE
1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

ON

COMET WEST, 1976

well up in the eastern sky before morning twilight, the comet unfurled two tails.
To the unaided eye a gossamer gas tail
spanning more than a dozen degrees
preceded a magnificent, arching dust tail
20 to 25 long.
Just as no two snowflakes are alike,
neither are two comets. But the reported
similarities between Comet Bennett and
Donatis comet of 1858 gained worldwide
attention early in April. Telescopic observers perceived a steady procession of
spiraling jets that emanated from Bennetts brilliant starlike pseudonucleus.
Extending in the antisolar direction was
a narrow dark lane the shadow of
the nucleus and the comas sunward
side exhibited bright parabolic hoods.
These are exactly the features seen in
Donatis comet more than a century
earlier by George P. Bond and others.
By the end of April, having become
circumpolar, Comet Bennett and its long,
narrow tail was strikingly apparent in the
northern sky at every hour of the night.
It remained visible to the naked eye
until the final days of May.
Comet West, C/1975 V1 (1976 VI).
The early story of this comet was rather
checkered. Coming on the heels of the
dismal performance by Comet Kohoutek,
no one wanted to raise false hopes. Then,
too, Richard Wests comet seemed to
brighten in a very irregular fashion as its
distance from the Sun dwindled. Until
just a week before perihelion no one expected much of a show.

All that changed when reports came in

of the comet being spotted with binoculars as a brilliant object of magnitude 1
to 2 very low in the western evening twilight. On February 25th, the day of perihelion passage, the comet was picked up
telescopically in midafternoon by several
amateurs in the U.S. and, a few hours
later, in Japan. Shortly before sunset the
author spotted Comet West with the unaided eye 7 from the Sun, looking much
like Venus does at such an elongation.
Within a few days Comet West
emerged from the morning twilight and
put on an apparition unlike anything seen
in generations. From its yellowish head,
still of negative magnitude, issued an
enormous and complex tail system. The
least optical aid showed a multirayed
gas tail, but the grandest feature was the
enormous banded dust tail, fully 35 in
length, which had a dull reddish hue to
the naked eye.
About this time telescopes revealed at
first two and soon four separate nuclei.
The stresses encountered as the comet
sped within 30 million km of the broiling
Sun proved too much for its fragile icy

core. Gleaming like four tiny jewels, the

nuclei gradually separated in subsequent
weeks, one of them disappearing altogether. Comet West was now in full retreat from the Sun, but it remained an
impressive naked-eye object until the
end of March.
Following Comet Wests apparition
came a 20-year lull during which no
bright comets were seen. Comet Halleys
2nd-magnitude return in 198586 ended
up a disappointment as far as the Northern Hemisphere public was concerned,
and 1990s loudly heralded Comet Austin
proved to be another Kohoutek. An entire generation of astronomers grew up
never having seen a really bright comet.
Eventually, the notion began to circulate
that, at least with regard to great comets,
the 20th century probably would close
uneventfully. But those who believed
this forecast were in for a surprise.
Comet Hyakutake, C/1996 B2. At first
no one suspected that the 10th-magnitude fuzzball spotted by Yuji Hyakutake
on the morning of January 31st would
become anything more than a run-ofthe-mill comet. However, the first orbital

Astronomers didnt
know what to expect
when Comet West visited the inner solar system 21 years ago, but
its spectacular tail system and brilliant head
allayed early fears of a
disappointing apparition. Sky & Telescopes
Dennis di Cicco took
this 2-minute exposure
in early March 1976
with an 8-inch f/1.5
Celestron Schmidt camera and Fujichrome
100 slide film. The performance of this great
comet delighted not
only the amateurs who
followed it every night
but also the comet researchers who studied
the complex structure
of its dust tail and the
disintegration of its
nucleus.

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

January 1997 Sky & Telescope

49

calculations indicated that this newcomer was both intrinsically fairly bright
and destined to pass very near Earth.
Although it was found 1.8 a.u. from
Earth, it was en route to whizzing past
us only 15 million km away.
For some time following this announcement few in the astronomical
community grasped the full significance
of the situation. Since the comets Earth
flyby would occur before perihelion,
many thought it would simply look like
a somewhat brighter version of 1982s
Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock: a very large,
tailless patch of nebulosity.
But as February gave way to March,
the realization that Comet Hyakutake
might become a great comet swept the
world and the comet performed as had
been hoped. By mid-March it was a 4thmagnitude blur with a tail already more
than 5 long. Over the next few days its
rate of development could only be characterized as explosive. By the 20th the
comets head rivaled Polaris in brightness, and a faint tail could be traced for
more than 25 (S&T: June 1996, page
20; July 1996, page 22).
The climax of the display came on the
nights of March 24th through 26th as
the comet, at magnitude 0, moved from
near the handle of the Big Dipper to be
poised next to the Pole Star. Visible all
night, the comet became the brightest

object in the sky as seen from dark sites.

Its ghostly tail arched overhead before
stretching off far to the south. This enormous appendage spanned at least 75,
and there were a handful of claims that
it exceeded 100!
Comet Hyakutakes grand tail was
largely swallowed up by moonlight after
the 29th, but it did make one minor
resurgence in mid-April. Scattered reports indicated that the comet, now 2nd
magnitude, sported a tail at least 30 to
40 long for a week or so before it finally disappeared into the evening twilight.
THE FUTURE
Before bringing our discussion of
great comets to a close we must, of
course, address the extraordinary object
discovered by Alan Hale and Thomas
Bopp in July 1995 (S&T: November
1995, page 20). Does Comet Hale-Bopp,
C/1995 O1, have the potential to join
the ranks of the great comets? To the
consternation of many, its future is still a
question mark even at press time.
Comet Hale-Bopps development from
discovery through last spring implied that
it might attain a negative magnitude near
perihelion on April 1, 1997. Disturbingly,
during summer and early autumn the
comets rate of brightening ebbed dramatically. By the beginning of October
it was hardly any brighter in apparent
Comet Hyakutake,
C/1996 B2, near Polaris
(upper right), as photographed by David R.
Fideler on March 27th
with a 50-millimeter
f/2.8 lens and Kodak Ektachrome 1600 film.
From their dark site
near Pentwater, Michigan, Fideler and his
companions Andrew
Harwood and Jason
Cunningham observed
Hyakutakes tail
stretching like a searchlight beam some 80
across the predawn sky.
The comets strong
aquamarine color was
plainly visible through
binoculars and with the
naked eye.

Comet Hale-Bopp was still 440 million

kilometers (2.9 a.u.) from the Sun and six
months from perihelion when Chris Schur
of Payson, Arizona, took this picture during the total lunar eclipse of September 26,
1996. Schur used a 12.5-inch f/5 Newtonian
reflector for this 20-minute exposure on
Kodak Pro 400 PPF film. Despite its great
distance the comet could be detected with
the naked eye throughout last summer
and fall. Will this join the ranks of the
great comets of the 20th century?

magnitude than at the start of July. Some

long-time comet observers nervously
raised the specter of Kohouteks 1973 fiasco, warning of a possible Hale-Flopp!
In spite of its setback, no one can deny
that this object is intrinsically very bright
and astonishingly active. As such, a turnaround in its behavior would come as no
great surprise. If the comet does return
to its earlier brightness parameters it
could well be visible telescopically during the daytime, just like the great
comets of 1910, 1927, 1965, and 1976.
The relative geometry of Hale-Bopp,
the Sun, and Earth around the time of
the comets perihelion precludes any
possibility of a spectacularly long tail
like that of Hyakutake. At perihelion
0.9 a.u. from the Sun, Hale-Bopp will be
1.3 a.u. from Earth, the closest we will
ever get. We will be nearly at the worst
possible place in our orbit for viewing
this comet.
Even so, Hale-Bopps dust-rich composition might produce a tail of unusually high surface brightness. Such a tail
might help catapult it from the ranks of
the mundane, garden-variety comets into
the company of the most memorable visitors of modern times. Paired with Comet Hyakutake, Comet Hale-Bopp has the
potential of closing out the millenniums
comet record not with a whimper, but
with a decided bang.
One of the worlds most experienced comet
observers, John Bortle has contributed this magazines Comet Digest column since July 1977.

50

Sky & Telescope January 1997

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.