Comet Hale-Bopp

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <CENTER><IMG SRC="header.gif" WIDTH=400 HEIGHT=96 BORDER=0 ALIGN=top><BR> <FONT SIZE="+2"><B>Hail! Hail! Hale-Bopp!</B></FONT></CENTER> <table width=180 VALIGN=TOP align=RIGHT><tr><td><IMG SRC="./comet.jpg" ALIGN=TOP WIDTH="180" HEIGHT="157" BORDER="0" hspace=8></td></tr><td align=RIGHT><font size="-1">Photo courtesy of Chris Garasi, Chris Gelino, Dawn Leeber and Amy Simon.</FONT><p> <B>Comet Hale-Bopp taken in a 2-minute exposure through a Meade 10" telescope at New Mexico State University.</b></font><hr></td></tr></table> <P><IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>After 20 months waiting in the wings, sharpening up its act, Comet Hale-Bopp is ready to take the stage. Beginning this week, the week of March 10, you won't have to have a telescope, or be willing to get up at the crack of dawn, to see what some are calling the comet of the century.<BR> <IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>By this past Saturday, March 8, Hale-Bopp could be seen from Albuquerque just past dusk with the naked eye, appearing around 7 p.m. as a fuzzy star hanging just above the northwest horizon. And day by day, it will be rising higher in the early evening sky as it heads toward its late-March, early-April peak.<BR> <IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>Hale-Bopp could rightly be called a New Mexico comet. Cloudcroft, N.M., astronomer Alan Hale was killing time with his telescope in the driveway of his mountain home in July 1995, when he first spotted the fuzzy blob. A few quick checks of his sky atlases told him he had found a comet.<BR> <IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>Within days, it became clear that this was no ordinary comet.<BR> <IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>"It should be the brightest comet in your lifetime or mine," astronomer Alan Stern with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said days after the discovery. "It could be like the Fourth of July."<BR> <table width=200 VALIGN=TOP align=RIGHT><tr><td ALIGN=CENTER><A HREF="../default.htm"><IMG SRC="./abq.gif" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=47 ALIGN=bottom BORDER=0></A><br> <P><a target=_top href=../default.htm><IMG SRC="./home.gif" WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=23 ALIGN=top border=0></a> <P><a target=_top href=../scitech/default.htm><IMG SRC="./science.gif" WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=24 ALIGN=bottom border=0></a> <P><IMG SRC="./comety.gif" WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=46 VALIGN=top><BR><A HREF="stories.htm" TARGET="ContainerFrame" align=top>ABQ Journal Hale-Bopp Stories</A> <P><IMG SRC="./comety.gif" WIDTH=120 HEIGHT=46 VALIGN=top><BR><A HREF="links.htm" TARGET="ContainerFrame" align=top>Hale-Boppon The Web</A><hr></td></tr></table> <IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>When Hale and Arizona star-gazer Thomas Bopp (who spotted the comet the same night Hale did) discovered the comet that now bears their name, Hale-Bopp was beyond the orbit of Jupiter, deep in the solar system on its route toward a close encounter with the sun.<BR> <IMG SRC="./blank.gif" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=1 ALIGN=bottom>That was far more distant than any other comet at its moment of discovery. It set professional and amateur astronomers into a comet-watching frenzy that will reach its peak in late March, as Comet Hale-Bopp makes its closest approach to the sun.<BR> <BR> <CENTER><img src="fleck.jpg"><BR><B>John Fleck</b><BR> Journal science writer John Fleck has been writing about the comet since its discovery, and we've collected an <A HREF="stories.htm">archive of his work.</A><BR> </CENTER> </BODY>