Hale-Bopp Called One of Largest

Photo courtesy of Chris Garasi, Chris Gelino, Dawn Leeber and Amy Simon. Comet Hale-Bopp taken in a 2-minute exposure through a Meade 10" telescope at New Mexico State University.

Northern Hemisphere observers with telescopes and persistence have a shot at seeing Comet Hale-Bopp low in the southern sky from September through November of 1997.
But for the rest of us, the grand looping of orbit of The Great Comet of 1997 won't bring it back into view until around 4300 A.D.
The comet, discovered by New Mexico astronomer Alan Hale and Arizona stargazer Thomas Bopp, has earned a permanent place in the record books, a Roger Maris, if not a Babe Ruth, of comets.
It is, according to Jacques Sauval of the Observatoire Royal de Belgique:
- The second brightest comet of all time, after Comet Sarabat of 1729;
- The seventh-longest a comet has been visible to the naked eye (five of the six comets ahead of it are return visits of the famed Comet Halley).
NASA scientists estimate its diamter at 25 miles, one of the largest comets ever, eight times more massive than Halley. And it was so bright that it is yielding a bounty of data on the chemical composition of comets.

Journal science writer John Fleck has been writing about the comet since its discovery, and we've collected an archive of his work.