Thank goodness for dew-zappers! Last night was downright damp. Everything got soaked. If not for my homemade dew-zapper, I would have had to pack it in before midnight. The sketch at left captures the view at 129X in my 10-inch Newtonian. Hale-Bopp features a stellar core within an oval coma. The coma extends 12' along an east-west axis. It appears brighter along the southeast and southwest borders. This feature looks very much like the "sparrow wing" tails sported last March by comet Hyakutake. A faint jet extends due north from the nuclear region for a distance of three arc minutes. The primary tail extends eight arc minutes to the northwest. This tail features a bright, cone-shaped inner region. A diffuse nebulosity, 12'x16' in size, engulfs the brighter conic section of the tail. I am continually amazed at the brightness and detail visible in this comet, still nearly 150 million kilometers from Earth!!!!