Comet Hale-Bopp, Friday morning, March 7, 1997. Photographed with a 5-inch F6 A-P refractor, 3 minutes @ F4.5. Unguided(!). The film was off the shelf Fuji HG-400. My first sighting of H-B in the evening sky was 10 hours prior. (Optics by Roland Christen, equatorial mount by Scott Losmandy; nice work, guys.)

This photo was made with a lot of "Martian technology" -- advanced computer controlled mount and topflight optics (click here to see).