Comet Hale-Bopp has brightened nearly 100-fold since its discovery last July, and is now a magnitude 6.6 object. The comet is still more than 3 AU (450 million km) from Earth and there is talk it may brighten to naked eye visibility within the next month or so. The drawing at left captures the view at 82X through my 10-inch Starfinder Newtonian. Hale-Bopp features a stellar nucleus at the southern extreme of a fan-shaped coma. The coma measures roughly 3 arc minutes on each leg. Hale-Bopp continues to reside in Sagittarius and follows a northwesterly track covering 0.3 degree a day.