The above true color image of Comet Hyakutake was taken the night of March 21/22. Tonight, Comet Hyakutake will make its nearest approach to Earth, closing to a mere 10 million miles as it passes over the planet's Northern Hemisphere.

Both gravitational and electromagnetic radiations have been detected in rapid succession for an explosive merging event for the first time. Data from the outburst fit well with a spectacular binary neutron-star death-spiral. The explosive episode was seen on August 17 in nearby NGC 4993, an elliptical galaxy only 130 million light years distant.

Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129, some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus. While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is likely that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery some five billion years ago.