3 Color photos of the Comet C/1996 B2 Hyakutake on 03-28-96 taken from Austria ============================================================================== These three photos of Hyakutake were taken during the night from March 27th to March 28th under a very dark sky. After the setting of the moon at about 1:00 UT the photographic conditions at my observing site in the field near to Niederleis/Lower Austria were perfect, which is becoming quit seldom recently. That night the comet was visually the most magnificant sight I ever had in the skies. The camera I used for all exposures was a YASHICA TL-Electro (despite of its name nearly completely mechanical), which I mounted piggy-back on my Meade 8" f/10 SC-telescope. For guiding I used a 10mm crosshair eyepiece, which proved the best for keeping Hyakutake's starlike core centered in spite of the comet's fast movement in declination (and a bit slower also in rectaszension). Really necessary was the guiding only when I photographed with the telephoto lens. The film I used was the for deep-sky photography as well as for Hyakutake already well-tried Fuji Super G Plus. Description of each photo: 1. The comet in a 50mm standard lens: ---------------------------------- Exposure start: 1:25 UT, exposure time: 20 minutes. At the time of the exposure the comet's head was located in Camelopardalis near to the border to Cassiopeia and Cepheus. The tail extended across Camelopardalis, Draco and Ursa Major ending near to the star Alpha UMa, Dhube, in the upper left corner of the picture. The comet's tail was 40 degrees long! The slightly brighter star just right of the image's center is Polaris. It's quite interesting to study the changes of shape along the tail. 2. The comet in a 205mm telephoto lens ----------------------------------- Exposure start: 2:11 UT, exposure time: 45 minutes. The image field of this photo measures about 10x7 degrees. Remarkable is the thinning of the tail just outside the coma (as may be seen in many comets) as well as the distinct blue-green color of the shock front in the direction of the sun. 3. The comet in a 28mm wide-angle lens: ------------------------------------ Exposure start: 3:05 UT, exposure time: 11 minutes. Because of the piggy-back mounting of the camera on my telescope and the position of the comet near to the celestial pole the tube of my telescope can be seen on the left side of this picture. At the bottom of the photo there is the already brightening horizon (dawn was just beginning) and on the right side the milky way running through the constellation Cassiopeia and its environment can be spotted. The slightly brighter star above the comet is again Polaris. Altogether all I can say is that Hyakutake was the most impressing object I ever photographed. Clear skies, Walter Koprolin e-mail: koprolin@venus.ast.univie.ac.at If anyone wants to publish any of my pictures in any form, he should contact me FIRST via e-mail.