Comet Hale-Bopp
What a treat - first Hyakutake and then a year latter, Comet Hale-Bopp. All the photos were taken in March, 1997 in our backyard except for the one just below which was taken at the Deer Lake subdivision, about two miles from our house. Notice the two-tail structure.

Comets are failed harbingers of doom, but many of us will remember more fondly the peaceful visits of comets Hayakutake and Hale-Bopp to our skies in 1996 and 1997. These wanderers of our solar system spend most of their time in its cold outer reaches, only occasionally venturing near Earth's orbit. As they veer close to the Sun, ice and dust from their small nuclei are swept out by the radiation and solar wind into a fuzzy halo, or coma, and a long tail.
From "Look into the Seeds of Time" by Joanne Baker - Science 15 December 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5806, p. 1707
March 31, 1997 8:30 pm
March 16, 1997 5:30 am March 12, 1997 5:30 am