page_title: Alan Hale (astronomer)
section_title: Discovery of Comet Hale–Bopp
hierarchical_section_title: Alan Hale (astronomer) / Discovery of Comet Hale–Bopp
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Stub comete Categoria:Immagini stub
context_page_description: Alan Hale is an American professional astronomer, who co-discovered Comet Hale–Bopp along with amateur astronomer Thomas Bopp.
  Hale specializes in the study of sun-like stars and the search for extra-solar planetary systems, and has side interests in the fields of comets and near-Earth asteroids. He has been an active astronomer most of his life and currently serves as the president of the Earthrise Institute, which he founded, and which has as its mission the use of astronomy as a tool for breaking down international and intercultural barriers. The International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid in Hale's honor, 4151 Alanhale, in recognition of his numerous comet observations.
context_section_description: Hale first spotted the comet that would come to bear his name from his home in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, where the night sky is exceptionally dark. Since 1970 Hale had observed over 200 known comets, and on the night of July 22–23, 1995, after finishing his observations of periodic Comet Clark, and while waiting for periodic Comet d'Arrest to become visible above the horizon, he "decided to pass the time by observing some deep-sky objects in Sagittarius", and pointed his Meade DS-16 telescope towards globular cluster M70. He said that he "immediately noticed a fuzzy object in the field" which had not been present when he had observed that region of the sky two weeks earlier.
  After consulting his astronomical sources, and determining that the comet was likely unknown, Hale says: 
  I sent an email to Brian Marsden and Dan Green at the Central Bureau ... informing them of a possible comet; later, when I had verified that the object had moved against the background stars, I sent them an additional email. I continued to follow the comet for a total of about 3 hours, until it set behind trees in the southwest, and then was able to email a detailed report, complete with two positions.
  Unknown to Hale, that night Thomas Bopp was observing the same region of the sky with friends near Stanfield, Arizona. At around 11:00 pm, Bopp was observing M70 through his telescope and "noticed a fainter, fuzzy object coming into the field". Bopp and his friends followed the object for the next hour, and after seeing it move relative to the background stars, concluded that they had been viewing a comet. Bopp then drove back to his home in Glendale, and sent a telegram to the Central Bureau informing them of the comet.
  On July 23, the IAU issued Circular 6187 to announce the joint discovery of the new comet. Per Hale, calculations indicate that Hale–Bopp likely last appeared on the order of 4000 years ago, but any record of this previous encounter had not yet been positively identified from ancient records. It has also been determined that Hale–Bopp will not return to the inner solar system until approximately 4385.
  Comet Hale–Bopp, originally labeled C/1995 O1, and sometimes called "the Great Comet of 1997", became one of the most-viewed comets in human history, and the brightest comet seen since Comet West in 1976, appearing 1000 times brighter than Comet Halley did at the same distance.
  When the comet was at the peak of its brightness, Hale says he was giving talks about the comet in big cities with light-polluted night skies, so he did not get a chance "to see it all that much when it was really bright."
  
  Regarding the press conference of the comet’s discovery, Hale praised the reporting done by “the very first reporter that broke the story of the comet’s discovery,” the Albuquerque Journal’s science reporter John Fleck:
  John spoiled me. The rest of the media ... were mostly not like him. I would go round and round the same things over and over and over again and they would still get it wrong.
  As an example of the media getting it wrong, Hale told this story:
  Due to frustration with the reporter interviewing him for USA Today when they asked him about a supposed UFO following the comet, Hale made a joke that he would meet the aliens when they land at Roswell and confront them for following “his” comet. Hale stated that the resulting article reported in seriousness that “Hale said he will go to Roswell to meet the spacecraft when it lands." And that line was the only thing they reported of what he said in the entire 45-minute interview.
caption: Comet Hale–Bopp
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