Comet Hyakutake in 1996

Comet Hyakutake C/1996 B2) was discovered in January 1996 and in very short order became a spectacular sight in the northern sky, rapidly moving through the constellations of Boötes, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor before sinking down to the western sunset sky in Perseus.  My pictures below were all obtained in the March-April 1996 from several locations in central Virginia, either near Fredericksburg or from Hanover County west of Ashland.  As of August 2026, this is the best surviving orbital diagram I could find on the internet.

The comet was marked by a very long, narrow dust and gas tail that didn't seem to separate as many comets' tails do, so that the impression of its very fast actual motion through space was accentuated by the visual effect of the tail.  The spectacular nature of this comet was a combination of its great brightness and the fact that (at least for us in the northern hemisphere) it was visible high in the sky in the middle of the night.  Many comets, including Halley, are brightest and most impressive when low on the horizon in twilight, but that was not the case here.  This diagram of the comet's orbit shows how it passed almost directly above (north of) the Earth at the very same time it was closest to us.  A better example of an amateur photo of the comet, taken on March 27, 1996, doesn't reveal the same "kink" in its tail that is visible in my pictures, but that could be due to a physical change in the tail over the course of a few days. This picture on flickr by RadicalRetinoscopy does show the kink in the tail, which he also comments on. I can't determine the date of this image by Fred Espenak, but it also highlights the long, straight tail.

March 22, 1996	March 23, 1996	April 13, 1996

The first thumbnail links to a set of images that are labeled as having been taken on March 23, but actually they were taken late in the evening on March 22, most likely from my parents' home in western Hanover County.