Hyakutake Images

Colour images of C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake)

A colour image of C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) taken by Michael Brown (University of Melbourne) and Chris Fluke (University of Melbourne) using the 40 inch telescope at Siding Spring. The image was taken on the morning of Sunday 25 Feb 1996 (UT 24.77 Feb 96) after a night imaging for slow moving objects (comets/asteroids) beyond 20 AU. The ion tail is clearly visible, stretching towards the top left of the image. The image is 28 arcmin X 17 arcmin and is a combination of a 60 second R band exposure, an 80 second V band exposure and a 100 second B band exposure. The magnitudes of the comet are approximately R=7.6, V=6.9 and B=7.5.

The image has appeared on Swedish Television Channel Two news ("Rapport") and has been shown on Japan's NHK TV station. Several of the following images have been published in The Age (21/3/96) newspaper, Asahi Shimbun newspaper(Nov 96), The Australian newspaper (21/3/96), Sky and Telescope (May 96) and Revista UNIVERSO Astronomia y Astronautica. Associated Press distributed the image world wide with The Age article. It has also been used for displays at the Hayden Planetarium (American Museum of Natural History) and the Maynard F. Jordan Planetarium (University of Maine).

Image List

A larger GIF (394k) of the above image is available.

A larger jpg (147k) of the above image is available.

A 1130k (24 bit colour) TIFF version of the large colour image on this page.

A 407k image (produced by subtracting a median fit to the original image) with detail in the head and tail. There could be evidence of a disconnection event in this image but it could be an artifact of the median filter. As seen in the Australian (21/3/96)

A 170k image (produced by subtracting a guassian fit to a median fit of the original image) showing structure in the tail. The dark ring is an artifact of the gaussian fit used. As seen in the Age (21/3/96).

The 60 second R band image is available(347k).

A contour plot of the 60 second R band image.

A colour image with a different brightness setting(176k).

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R band images of C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake)

A false colour image (in R band) of C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) taken by Michael Brown (University of Melbourne) and Chris Fluke(University of Melbourne) using the 40 inch telescope at Siding Spring on the morning of Tuesday 20th Feb 1996 after a night searching fields for Kuiper belt objects. The field of view is 24 arcmin X 14 arcmin and the integration time was 200 seconds. The comet's magnitude is approximately R=7.5. The trail at the bottom left of the image is a satellite. Click here for a full size (137K) image, here for a 137k image with a different colour map or her e for a 157k image with a log scale colour map. If you want more details abo ut this image please email Michael Brown mbrown@physics.po.unimelb.edu.au(remove .po for a valid address).

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