Hale-Bopp Comet Image

This picture was taken at 9:32 pm CDT at a rural Milan site using a Meade 8" telescope and an SBIG ST-6 CCD camera. This was a 15 second exposure. The size of the above photo is 28' x 18' (arc minutes). The altitude was only 3.7 degrees. The moon was 9 days old and shining brightly. The comet was seen briefly with binoculars at 9:20 pm and was photographed several times with the CCD from 9:23 to 9:42 pm. It set at 9:57 pm. Sunset was at 8:15 pm. The comet was a distance of 2.027 AU (187 million miles) from Earth and 1.205 AU (111 million miles) from the Sun.