Comet Hyakutake Now Sighted near Munich

The Director of the Munich Planetarium, Thomas W. Kraupe , sends this report:

I spotted Comet Hyakutake with the naked eye in the clear sky of Boschhof, about 50 Kilometers south of Munich, on March 14, 1996, at 1:00 am MET (midnight UT) as a 'fuzzy star' in Libra. It was close to Alpha1/2 Libra, and formed a nice and nearly equilateral triangle with the star Mu Libra. The magnitude was about 4.

An hour later, a 16x50 pair of binoculars showed it as a diffuse blob with a diameter of at least half of the moon (15 arcmin). There seemed to be an offset of the central concentration of light towards its southern end and a trace of a short diffuse tail (about 1 deg) fanning out towards north.