66K
Observer: Jean-Marie Will
Location: European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile
Date: February 9, 1996 08:21 UT
This false-colour photo shows the first image of comet C/1995 B2 (Hyakutake), obtained with the DFOSC instrument at the Danish 1.54-metre telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory. This comet is expected to pass near the Earth in late March 1996.
The observations was made by Jean-Marie Will, visiting astronomer from Sternwarte der Universitaet Bonn, Germany. This is a provisional version which has only been bias-subtracted and flat-fielded. An improved version will be displayed in a few day's time.
It is a reproduction of a 20-min CCD frame with start-of-exposure on 9 February 1996 at 08:21:11 UT. The instrument was DFOSC with the Danish Loral/Lesser CCD (2052 x 2052 pix; field of view 13.3 x 13.3 arcmin).
At the time of this observation, the comet was at a distance of 1.52 AU (227 million kilometres) from the Earth and 1.88 AU (281 million kilometres) from the Sun.
This is the caption to ESO PR Photo 11/96. It may be reproduced, if credit is given to the European Southern Observatory.
Comet 1996 B2 Hyakutake Home Page