Comet Hale-Bopp

The comet Hale-Bopp was discovered by Alan Hale from Cloudcroft (New Mexico, USA) and Thomas Bopp from Stanfield (Arizona, USA) independent from each other. Both made this discovery by chance while they observed the star-cluster M70 with their 40cm-telescopes in the early morning on July, 23, 1995. The discovery was at its beginning not from big interest because at first it was difficult to observe this comet from the northern hemisphere, at second many comets are discovered every year and at third one did not know its path. But since astronomers calculated its path, the interest grew immediately because this comet was thought to be visible with the naked eyes about one year later.

Comet Hale-Bopp was responsible for a great astronomical fracases in winter 1996/1997. One could observe it with the naked eyes and at dark places one was even able to see two tails. The white tail is made out of dust and the blue tail consists of plasma (ionized gas).

I have made these pictures of Hale-Bopp with a normal SLR-camera and different focal-lengths. As films, I used Kodak 400 and Fuji 400. The quality of the pictures suffers because I made the web-pictures by using a simple web-cam to make photos from the original ones.




The first picture shows a former fellow student to the right an me to the left. The exposure time was 30s, and the foreground was brightened by a flash.




I have made these pictures with a 300mm focal length and exposure times of 10s and 20s. The blue plasma-tail and the white dust-tail is good visible. The stars appear as small lines because of the rotation of the earth.






The last 4 pictures are made at the romantic castle in Heidelberg, Germany.