Monroe's Astronomy Pictures / Comet Hale-Bopp

6/22/2001

Comet Hale-Bopp

This is a photograph of Comet Hale-Bopp, taken in the spring of 1997 from Radcliff, KY. If you look carefully, you can see the two main tails of the comet- the whiter dust tail, made up of particles evaporating off the comet's surface, and the bluer ion tail, formed by interaction with the solar wind.