page_title: Thomas Bopp
section_title: After the discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Bopp / After the discovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Thomas Bopp making a speech at Fernbank auditorium in 2010
context_page_description: Thomas Joel Bopp was an American amateur astronomer. In 1995, he discovered comet Hale–Bopp; Alan Hale discovered it independently at almost the same time, and it was thus named after both of them. At the time of the comet discovery he was a manager at a construction materials factory and an amateur astronomer. On the night of July 22, Bopp was observing the sky with friends in the Arizona desert when he made the discovery. It was the first comet he had observed and he was using a borrowed, home-built telescope.
context_section_description: After the discovery, Bopp was in demand on television and radio, and was invited to speak at conferences. One such appearance was on the children's science television show Bill Nye The Science Guy. On March 21, 1997, Hale and Bopp were named ABC Person of the Week in the Friday night broadcast. Bopp has said that "I thought that it would be a comet that would be mentioned in the back of some obscure textbook somewhere, but it's certainly not turned out to be that way." As Hale–Bopp became more visible, Bopp left his job and became a full-time speaker and educator. He enjoyed presenting in schools, science centers and museums, enthusing children with astronomy, and even met up with his co-discoverer Hale in Queensland while taking a group of school children to see the 2012 eclipse in Australia.
  At White Sands Missile Range in 1997 Bopp was invited to be an observer when an ultraviolet spectrograph was launched by Black Brant rocket to observe the comet and look for argon and neon. Previously unobserved isotopes were discovered in addition to a third sodium tail. Bopp was awarded an honorary doctor of Science degree from Youngstown State University in 1998. Bopp and his father also became the first two members of the Friends of Ward Beecher Planetarium at the university.
  In 1997, as comet Hale–Bopp reached its brightest point, Bopp's brother and sister-in-law were killed in a car accident after photographing the comet. "This has been the best week of my life. And the worst," Bopp told a National Geographic reporter.
  Bopp and his father Frank have had an asteroid named after them, (7086) Bopp, discovered October 5, 1991, by Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker. In 1997, the Shoemakers, both famous for co-discovering comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, were involved in a car crash. Gene died in the crash and his ashes were sent to the Moon along with an image of Comet Hale-Bopp, "the last comet that the Shoemakers observed together."
  
  In 1997, when Bopp pointed out the comet would soon disappear from view and would not be visible for another 2380 years, he said he would always continue looking up at the stars. 
  I'll never give up looking at the skies. There's so many beautiful things there. And I love to share that with people.
   He continued to volunteer at observatories near Phoenix, Arizona, towards the end of his life, speaking about Hale–Bopp. He died of liver failure on January 5, 2018, at the age of 68.
caption: Thomas Bopp at Fernbank auditorium, 2010
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