My first 'sight' of Hale-Bopp was in this photo made from Mescalero Sands, New Mexico, on September 25, 1995. The comet was low in the west when I made this picture over the distant lights of Roswell, New Mexico (no jokes, please). This may have been the most productive single night of astrophotography I've ever enjoyed (meteors graced widefield frames on cue, and I caught the best display of zodiacal light I have ever seen). This was the first deep-sky frame exposed.

Comet Hale-Bopp was then still outside the orbit of Jupiter -- 650,000,000 miles from Earth and a little farther than that from the Sun. It was an eleventh magnitude glow all but lost among the stars of the Milky Way in Sagittarius. (30 minutes, 5-inch F6 AP refractor @ F4.5; Lumicon-hypered Technical Pan film; ST4 CCD autoguider.)