comet gallery 1996-2007

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Every now and then, we are witness to spectacular comets that might appear only once in our lifetime...

Comet Hyautake in March 1996 was the first comet I'd ever seen and then tried to photograph. This is the photo from 3/25/1996 @ 3:38 am started it all! Taken on a windy and cold morning in the NE sky before I had to go to work. A Minolta Maxxum 5000i, tripod, 50mm f4.5 lense, 400ASA B&W film for 1 min.

Soon the limitations of 35mm film in a light polluted suburban sky convinced me to build the Cookbook 245 CCD camera to peer into the night sky for a much clearer picture into the wonders of the universe.

Comet Hale-Bopp was an unexpected treat, I spent a lot of time imaging from 1996 to 1997. Some of these images were uploaded to the Near Live Comet Watching and JPL systems as many Astronomers did world-wide.