spectrographic analysis of the coma of 96p/machholz was made during its 2007 apparition, as part of the lowell observatory comet composition long-term observing program. when compared with the measured abundances of five molecular species in the comae of the other 150 comets in their database, these measurements showed 96p/machholz to have far fewer carbon molecules. these other comets had on average 72 times as much cyanogen as 96p/machholz.