"I don't care about the naming
of the comet. If many people could enjoy that comet, that is the happiest
thing for me."
- Yuji Hyakutake, 1996
Mr. Hyakutake, discoverer of this comet, passed away at the age of 51 on April 11, 2002. This page is dedicated to his memory.
| Nikon 35mm camera with 135mm f/2.8 lens and Kodak 400 ASA film. |
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| This image of this Comet Hyaukatke shows the greenish bow shock wave of the coma (ionized oxygen) and the blue ion tail. The image was hand guided on the comet. Thus, the star trails show the motion of the Earth during the time of the exposure. The different colors of the trails are due to the different temperatures of the stars. |
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| The X-Ray comet?
Hyakutake emitted 100 times as many X-rays as predicted. This was surprising because comets don't possess the kind of nuclear furnace needed to produce such energetic radiation. Scientists speculated that the nucleus might reflect X-rays in sunlight, but the rays did not seem to originate at the nucleus. Instead, the X-rays originated about 20,000 kilometers ahead of the nucleus, in the coma. (The coma is the hazy greenish cloud of gas and dust spewed from the comet's nucleus that accounts for the comet's cotton-ball appearance.) According to experts at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD., the X-rays probably were made in the shock wave produced by the collision between the coma and the solar wind |
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