Comet Hyakutake was first discovered on January 30, 1996 by Yuji Hyakutake, an amateur astronomer from southern Japan. He had been searching for comets for years and had moved to Kagoshima for the dark skies in the nearby rural areas. He was using a powerful set of binoculars with six-inch objective lenses to scan the skies on the night that he discovered the comet.
In 1705 Edmond Halley predicted, using Newton’s formulated laws of motion, that the comet, which was seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 would return again in 1758. The comet did indeed return as predicted and was later named in his honor, even though he was not alive to see it himself. The average period of Halley’s orbit is 76 years but it is impossible to always calculate the dates of its reappearances by simply subtracting multiples of 76 years from 1986.