Outshining The Light Pollution

This five-minute exposure of the comet Hale-Bopp in the northwest sky at 8:25 PM on March 30, 1997 shows that it nearly outshines the artificial light emanating from a parking lot out of the picture at left. This photo was captured from the grounds of Northbrook Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hale-Bopp is flanked in the sky by the constellations Perseus (left) and Cassiopeia (right). The faint fuzzy blob just above the smallish Y-shaped tree at right center and at the comet's 5 O'clock position is M31--the Andromeda galaxy. Hale-Bopp shone at a bright apparent magnitude of -1.79 on this night.