Discovery of Comet Hyakutake

Comet Hyakutake was discovered on 30 January 1996 by the Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake, who used a pair of powerful binoculars from a site near Kagoshima. In March it passed within about fifteen million kilometers of Earth, one of the closest comet approaches in two centuries, and became a spectacular object, with a tail stretching across much of the sky. Observers saw it as a bright greenish object, and scientists studied it with space probes and telescopes. X-rays from a comet were detected for the first time in observations of Hyakutake, and the Ulysses spacecraft passed through its tail unexpectedly. It was called the Great Comet of 1996.

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