Detail View: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Collection: Comet Hale-Bopp
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Title:
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Comet Hale-Bopp
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Creator:
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NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Description:
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This image of Comet Hale-Bopp was taken by Jim Young of JPL's Table Mountain Observatory, approximately 30 miles east of Los Angeles in Wrightwood, CA, on March 12, 1997, at 3:59 a.m. PST, and was taken with a 250mm telephoto lens mounted on a 35mm camera at an aperture of f/4 and an exposure time of seven minutes. The bright head of the comet, called the coma, is pointed toward the Sun. The coma is composed of dust and gas, masking the solid nucleus of the comet made up of rock, dust and ice. The bluish tail seen heading away from the comet is the comet's ion tail, visible because of sunlight reflecting off of singly ionized carbon monoxide particles that fluoresce into visible wavelengths. The white tail pointing away from the comet is the dust tail, visible from sunlight reflected off of dust particles ejected from the comet over millions of miles of space.
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Date:
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3/20/97
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Identifier:
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P48479AC
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MediaType:
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Image
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Year:
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1997
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Contributor:
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JPL Archives
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Where:
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Los Angeles
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