Abstract
Considerable interest has been raised by the discovery of Comet Hale-Bopp (1995 O1) and the possibility that it might become a very bright object in Spring 1997. The evidence to support either of the conflicting hypothesis (an intrinsically bright comet or a faint comet in a very large outburst) is too limited to reach solid conclusions and may remain so for some months yet. The pre-discovery observations encountered to date provide some limits to photometric models and suggest that the comet may be intrinsically bright, but do not yet permit a firm discrimination, even between extreme scenarios, due to the enormous extrapolation that must be made from the heliocentric distance at discovery, to that of perihelion.
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Kidger, M.R. Comet Hale-Bopp (1995 O1). Earth Moon Planet 73, 15–22 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00058042
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00058042