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Observers: Francois Colas, Jean Lecacheux, Sylvie Jancart, Luc Henrard
Location: Pic du Midi Observatory, France
Date: May 1, 1997 21:00 UT
The "tails" of Hale Bopp
During the night of the first of May, we tried to observe the
differents features of the comet tail. As on April 29th we observed
with a sodium filter to see the Na neutral emission, but also with a
H2O+ filter (centered at 701 nm), a B filter to see C0+ emissions and a
continuum filter (684 nm).
The goal of the observations was to compare the morphology of the
"differents tails". It is obvious that the images with CO+ and H2O+
filters are similar even if the dynamic is different. The image with
the continuum filter shows the classic "dust tail" . The image obtained
with the Na filter is clearly different from the others, two streams
beeing visible in the tail. This fact must be analysed with the Na
production theories like in IAUC 6634 by H.Rauer and A. Fitzsimmons.
The images were obtained with a 50-mm F/1.4 Pentax photographic
objective and an HiSiS-44 CCD camera (1536x1024 pixels). The diagonal
of the image is of 11 degrees.
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