May 14, 1997

Comet Hale-Bopp from the Space Shuttle

This unusual image shows comet Hale-Bopp as viewed from Earth orbit on April 8, 1997, by the crew of the space shuttle Columbia.

The time-exposed image was taken just after sunset with a 35-mm camera. The last faint glow of sunlight illuminates the Earth's upper atmosphere, while the stars of the constellation Perseus shine through and above the atmosphere. The yellow streaks below are city lights and petroleum fires, which have become elongated due to the lengthy time exposure.

We take this opportunity to say "Thank you, comet Hale-Bopp," for a spectacular show, and to wish you the very best for the long journey back to the outer fringes of the solar system. We will leave records of your visit so that our descendents will welcome you when you return nearly 2,400 years hence.

More Cool Stuff

The above image is just one of more than 4,500 images of comet Hale-Bopp that amateur and professional astronomers from Australia, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Earth orbit have sent to NASA Web sites for surfers to view and enjoy.

The "Comet Hale-Bopp homepage" at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, contains more than 3,200 images, including one obtained by a California astronomer the night after the comet was discovered in July 1995. You'll find that page at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/index.html

The "Near-Live Comet Watching System" at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, contains more than 1,300 images, listed by date. The site also gives those of you who have original comet Hale-Bopp images the opportunity to upload them and add them to the collection:

http://comet.hq.nasa.gov/

From the mid-northern latitudes, comet Hale-Bopp will be visible low on the horizon in the west-northwest during evening twilight until about the end of May. Now observers in the Southern Hemisphere will get their turn to view the comet. Finding charts for Southern-Hemisphere viewing can be accessed at:

http://encke.jpl.nasa.gov/hale_bopp_info.html#finder_s

For more information on comet Hale-Bopp and additional links, go to our Observation of the Week of February 26, 1997:

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/nasa/ootw/1997/ootw_970226/ob970226.html

Our Observation of the Week of April 2, 1997, describes comet and meteorite collisions with Earth, Jupiter, and the Sun:

http://observe.ivv.nasa.gov/nasa/ootw/1997/ootw_970402/ob970402.html

NASA supports a number of educational Web sites that have excellent information on comets and other solar system bodies:

"Eyes on the Sky, Feet on the Ground," a set of pages of the Web site "Using Science and the Internet as Everyday Classroom Tools" from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Planetary bodies, including comets, are discussed in Chapter 5:

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/the_book/

The "Public Connection" Web site, an outreach project of Rice University and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. This site has a good, illustrated discussion of the crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter in July 1994:

http://space.rice.edu/hmns/connect.html

The "Science Information Infrastructure" project of the University of California at Berkeley. The site has an extensive comet section. To access this section, go to the URL listed below and click on the "Solar System." Then click on "Find That Comet!", which will allow you to locate comet Hale-Bopp in the sky, and on "The Comet's Tale," which is a self-guided tour of the origins, orbits, characteristics, and history of comets:

http://www.cea.berkeley.edu/Education/SII/SEGway/

"Windows to the Universe," an innovative and engaging Web site about the Earth and space sciences from the University of Michigan. This site has a special section on comets, including comets Shoemaker-Levy 9, Hyakutake, and Halley:

http://www.windows.umich.edu/

For links to shuttle image libraries, information on past and future shuttle missions, and other shuttle information, go to the Shuttle Mission Overview pages at the Kennedy Space Center or to the NASA shuttle homepage:

http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/missions.html

http://shuttle.nasa.gov