These pictures of Comet Hyakutake (C/1996 B2) were taken the night of March 23/24, 1996 from an urban backyard in Rochester, New York, by Brendan M. Fisher, a then post-doctoral researcher with the near-IR group at the University of Rochester. A 35mm SLR camera with a 100-300 mm f/4 zoom telephoto camera lens was used for the exposures. The camera was piggybacked on a small telescope that was used to guide the exposures. Kodak Royal Gold 1000 film was used and the pictures were developed at a local one-hour developing store with the instructions to print the backgrounds as black.
The images below were all scanned at 24 bits/pixel. They are all about 3 kB in size. Clicking on each image will bring up the originally scanned image, each about 45 kB.
This picture is a 10 minute exposure with the zoom set to the 100 mm focal length. The short arcs of the stars show the rapid motion of the comet with respect to the stars. The faint tail can be seen extending to the upper right of the central coma (the "head" of the comet).
This picture is a 5 minute exposure with the zoom set at 300 mm to get a more magnified view of the comet. The tail points towards the upper right.
This picture is a 10 minute exposure with the zoom set at 300 mm. More of the coma and the tail can be seen.
This picture is a 30 minute exposure with the zoom set at 300 mm. A faint, larger portion of the coma can be see. The trailed star images show that comet Hyakutake moved 23 arc-minutes (3/4 the diameter of the Moon) with respect to the stars in just 30 minutes.