Most long-time amateur astronomers agreed by the end of the 1990s that Comet Hyakutake was the most spectacular naked-eye comet in the 20 years after Comet West blazed its way across the skies in 1976. It even surpassed North American views of the long-anticipated Comet Halley in 1986! The celebrated second Comet Hyakutake was found on January 31, 1996, only just over a month since its observer Yuji Hyakutake located a fainter comet in nearby Libra.

Orbital calculations soon revealed that periodic comet Hyakutake B2 was returning to the vicinity of earth for the first time in about 8,000 years, having a huge elliptical orbit that kept the cold icy body far from the powerful heating effects of the solar wind. Dr. Brian Marsden, the professional astronomer responsible for disseminating announcements of celestial discoveries, announced that Hyakutake was the most intrinsically- bright comet to pass so near to earth since 1556! Approaching a relatively close 15 million kilometers, Hyakutake gave observers on earth a rare opportunity of studying such a body not only with telescopes, but also with naked eyes.

Even in light-polluted urban skies, the comet was visible as a discrete fuzzy patch, while in only slightly darker skies it broadened into a glorious display. At observing sites in the Santa Cruz mountains, the gaseous tail stretched as far as the width of the Big Dipper, while veteran comet-hunter Don Machholz reported tracing the tail an astonishing 70 degrees across darker skies in Northern California.

Views at its closest approach to earth must have resembled the legendary sights of 19th-century spectacles such as Comet Donati. This author observed a sharp, detailed nucleus a few arcminutes in diameter, surrounded by a huge gray-green coma that more than filled a 2-degree eyepiece view. With high-magnification observations using a 6" aperture scope, the head displayed curving jets or sprays that were clarified by using a nebular filter. In photographs the long tail sported constantly-changing wisps and streamers. This author tried (purely as an experiment) the ultra- high- contrast hydrogen- beta- line filter, designed to enhance the Horsehead nebula. To his surprise, as the sky background darkened to a pitch-black, the comet's tail showed the fine and narrow tracers of the photos!

PICTURE NO. 1 (left): This is a composite rendering of photographed and drawn images. Using a fast 200 mm telephoto lens, piggyback guided by a Celestron C-8 telescope focused on the coma of Hyakutake, Charles Chew made a 5' exposure on gas-hypered 3200 film at Grant Ranch Park near Lick Observatory in northern California. A broadband LPR filter was employed to reduce sky-fogging. Unsharp-masking uncovered fine details of of the "sprays" around the nucleus that were imperfectly registered in the original unprocessed print, but which were clearly visible by eye with careful scrutiny through an 8 inch aperture telescope. Using this picture, Steve Waldee produced a drawing of the comet, after comparing it with sketches made from various eye views using his own 80 mm refractor and 8 inch reflector telescopes. The trailed star images of the photo were shown here, as seen by eye in a "live" telescopic view, as normal pin-point sharp stars.

PICTURE NO. 2 (right): Using a wide-angle 350 mm f/2.8 lens, Chuck Vaughn made this composite color picture with 2 separate 10-minute exposures on hypered Fuji G400. Guiding was accomplished by locking on the coma with an electronic autoguider; thus the star images are trailed during the exposure, because of the different relative motions of the comet and the background stars during the total exposure time of 20 minutes. Heavy color and luminance level processing were performed by Waldee to enhance details in the coma and tail, though the almost gaudy cyan hue was actually captured in the original picture.