88K 14K
Observer: ???
Location: Kumanmoto Civil Astronomical Observatory, Japan
Date: September 2, 1996

41cm F6L, 60 seconds.

192K 61K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 4, 1996

Image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

76K 24K
Copyright David Johnson
Observer(s): David Johnson
Location: Newport, United Kingdom
Date: September 5, 1996

2 minute exposure with Starlight Express colour CCD camera. Telescope 12 inch f5 Newtonian.

74K 15K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 6, 1996

Image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

416K 135K
Observer: Pedro Re
Location: Portugal
Date: August - September 1996

All images were obtained from central Portugal with a C14 and HISIS22 CCD Camera.

35K 11K
Observer: Allen Ginzburg
Location: Aptos, California
Date: September 6, 1996 04:57 UT

CCD image of Hale Bopp. Telesope: 10" Meade LX-200 at f/6.3. Camera: Pixel211 CCD (field approx. 5.5' square). Exposure: 60 seconds. It seems to show the nucleus in 2 parts.

January 29, 1997 update: I discovered that the split nucleus is the result of Comet Hale-Bopp passing a 12th magnitude star.

108K 15K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 9, 1996

True color image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

137K 47K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 11, 1996

Image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

161K 64K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 13, 1996

Image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

27K 34K
Observer: Al Kelly
Location: Danciger, Texas
Date: September 14, 1996

I took several short exposures of H-B with my 32" f4 Newtonian and CB245 camera. After stacking seven 15-second exposures and running the composite image through a rank-order processing routine in Richard Berry's software, the tail structure(s) really started to show up.

168K 19K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 14, 1996

Image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

144K 29K

177K 52K
Observer: Mike DeMarquette
Location: Big Bear Lake, California
Date: September 15, 1996 04:45, 04:59 UT

Camera is a Minolta X-700 35mm camera with a 50mm lens at f/2.8 , film was ASA 400 some offmarket brand and the exposure times were 5min and 7min.

318K 88K
Observers: Olivier Hainaut, Karen Meech, James Bauer
Location: Mauna Kea, Hawaii
Date: September 16, 1996

Image obtained at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea , with the 8192^2 pixel CCD camera built by the Institute for Astronomy (Hawaii). This image is a 2min exposure through a VR filter (very broad-band, enclosing most of the visible light from green to red), except the central region (saturated on the 2min exposure), which was extracted from a 15sec image taken just after. On this image, N is up, E is left. At the time of the observations, the Sun was on the right side of the image (almost 2deg up from W). At least 6 dust jets are visible close to the nucleus (they have been slightly enhanced by dividing the image by a smooth cometary profile); they curve away from the Sun, as the solar wind drags the dust particles, to fade into the huge tail.

76K 25K
Observer: Otto Farago
Location: Swabian Obserwatory, Stuttgart, Germany
Date: September 16, 1996 19:13 UT

CCD-image of Hale-Bopp. ST-6 in focal length Celestron 14 (3190mm).

87K 43K
Observer(s): Anthony Ferro, Susan Wyckoff, Rodney Heyd, Peter Wehinger
Location: Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona
Date: September 17, 1996

This image was taken with the 0.9-m (36-inch) telescope using a Harris-I band filter. The image shows the comet with several different dust jets clearly visible. The sunward direction is roughly toward the top of the image. At the time this 600s image was taken, the comet was just over 3 AU from the Sun and 2.9 AU from the Earth.

209K 54K

134K 27K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 18, 1996

Images taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

232K 110K
Observers: H. Fukushima, N. Yamamoto
Location: National Astronomy Observatory, Japan
Date: July - December 1996

Images taken using the NAOJ 50cm reflector with a CCD camera.

263K 153K
Observers: H. Fukushima, N. Yamamoto
Location: National Astronomy Observatory, Japan
Date: April - November 1996

Images taken using the NAOJ 50cm reflector with a CCD camera.

86K 36K
Observers: Hal Weaver
Location: Hubble Space Telescope
Date: September 1995-1996

The above figure shows the temporal evolution of Comet Hale-Bopp over the course of about 1 year, as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the far-left frame we caught the comet about 60 hours after a huge outburst of dust, and the image shows an impressive spiral structure reminescent of a water sprinkler observed from above. The middle frame shows the comet during a more quiescent phase in which hardly any structure is seen in the coma without employing a strong intensity contrast in the display. The image at the far-right shows that the comet has now taken on a "porcupine" appearance as at least five jets can be seen sprouting from the nucleus. The nucleus of the comet is located at the center of each frame, but most of the light observed is due to scattered sunlight from fine dust grains that are emitted from the nucleus and which produce the cometary "coma". Each frame above is 10 arcsec across. For the far-left frame this corresponds to 47,000 km at the comet, for the middle frame this corresponds to 49,000 km at the comet, and for the far-right frame this correponds to 21,000 km at the comet. (The comet was much closer to the Earth during the September 1996 observations.)

47K 11K

86K 10K

69K 10K
Observer: Hal Weaver
Location: Hubble Space Telescope
Date: September 23-26, 1996

196K 31K

161K 50K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 23, 1996

Images taken with a ST8 7" F/6. Second image is a false color image.

89K 19K
Observers: David Renneke, Jeff Strasser
Location: Milan, Illinois
Date: September 28, 1996 15:36 UT

Image was taken at using a Meade 8" telescope and an SBIG ST-6 CCD camera. This was a 10 second exposure. The size of the photo is 28' x 18'. The comet was a distance of 2.97 AU from Earth. The moon was shining brightly being two days past full. The picture shows several jets.

167K 29K
Observer: David Hanon
Location: Ringgold, Georgia
Date: September 30, 1996

Image taken with a ST8 7" F/6.

More Comet Hale-Bopp Images (September 1996)

• Charles Morris Comet Observations (5 Images)