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F. Deglman, M. Womack (St. Cloud State Univ.), M. Braunstein (Central Washington Univ.), D.A. Pinnick, G. Aaker, M. Goldschen, J. Zilka, B. Henning (St. Cloud State Univ.), R. Comstock, P. Hoffman (Central Washington Univ.), D. Faith, S. Moore, J. Ricotta, A. Wiest, C. Modi (Pennsylvania State Univ. at Erie)
CCD images were obtained of comet Hale-Bopp over 28 nights from 1996 June to 1997 May covering a range of heliocentric distances of r = 4.12 - 0.91 using the 0.8-m University of Washington Manastash Ridge Observatory and the 0.25-m Pennsylvania State University at Erie mobile observatory. The images were reduced and spatially filtered to enhance faint structure in the coma. The final images clearly document the evolution of coma morphology, which was dominated by radial jets from r= 4.1 - 2.3 AU, curved fan-shaped jets from r = 1.2 - 1.0 AU, and arcs or shells for 0.9 < r < 1.0 AU. We present the images and derive an average dust expansion velocity of Vdust = 0.67 ± 0.07 km s-1 from measurements of the arc features from 1997 Feb - Apr. We present a few sample reduced images prior to filtering, the entire set of final images and all derived expansion velocities.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: womack@r2d2.stcloudstate.edu