THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701260064
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 99 lines
Comet-hunting astronomers are like weekend fishermen - everything they catch is big, bigger or biggest, with each new skylight heading our way touted as likely to surpass the one that came before.
So it is with Comet Hale-Bopp, already heralded by some scientists as one of this century's potentially great cosmic displays. Most astronomers agree that the 1997 comet is going to leave a trail of superlatives in the next three months.
Hale-Bopp is whizzing in from the dark and distant reaches of the outer solar system on a regular 4,000-year gravitational trip around the sun, which is 93 million miles from Earth. Hale-Bopp will pass no closer to Earth than about 125 million miles later this spring.
Nevertheless, compared with the fuzzy Comet Hyakutake, which put on a pretty good show in the northern sky last March, Hale-Bopp is likely to become a comet to remember, scientists report.
For one thing, Hale-Bopp is big, with an unusually bright head that scientists say is at least 25 miles in diameter. Astronomers said the dirty snowballs that make up the business end of most comets rarely approach this size.
Already Hale-Bopp is showing signs of the kind of activity that make for spectacular celestial displays. It has begun out-gassing from the warming effect of the sun while the comet is still far out in space. Out-gassing is nothing more than a cometary belch, an eructation of warming gasses inside the cometary nucleus.
But as belches go, Hale-Bopp's are pretty spectacular. Each burst of gas propels chunks of the comet's icy nuclear material into space, where they vaporize into cometary tail material and other celestial plumage.
Also adding to Hale-Bopp's charms, the comet will be visible at dawn as well as at dusk during much of its passage past the Earth on its way around the sun.
Early February will be a good time to look for Hale-Bopp in the early-morning eastern sky. Beaches and any elevated spots that reveal a far horizon should provide a good seat for the show.
The comet should rise around 3:30 a.m. local time on Feb. 6, and the moon won't come up for another couple of hours. And don't forget mittens and long johns. Comet-watching is chilly business.
Check moonrise in your newspaper or almanac and avoid observing the eastern sky near moonrise. By the end of February Hale-Bopp will double in brightness and be hard to miss. But the moon will be a bother at this time, so wait until March, when the big show begins.
City lights are killers for seeing comets, scientists agree.
Each night the comet will rise a little later and higher until eventually it may be viewed in the darkening sky after sunset.
If you miss Hale-Bopp this winter, come back in 4,000 years when the comet will play a return engagement.
If estimates of some comet-watchers are right, Hale-Bopp should rival Sirius, the brightest star, and the red planet Mars in brightness by March 22.
And also in early March, the comet will be visible in the dawning before sunrise and briefly in the evening after sunset.
By April 1 the comet will reach perihelion - its closest approach to the sun.
By mid-May, Hale-Bopp will have caught up with its destiny to circle the sun and and then rush away into a night that will last 4,000 years before the comet comes back to the smallish star that controls it. MEMO: Comet Hale-Bopp carries the names of simultaneous finders
Comets are named after their discoverers and if Comet Hale-Bopp lives
up to advance billing it may long memorialize the two astronomers who
separately but simultaneously found it.
Alan Hale heads the Southwest Institute for Space Research in
Cloudcroft, N.M. He is a 38-year old professional astronomer who always
keeps a subconscious eye peeled for comets.
On July 22, 1995, Hale turned up the rock 'n' roll background music
in his home observatory in Alamogordo, N.M., and started looking for
comets. He swung the telescope toward a likely dark-sky area but found
out his house blocked part of the telescope view.
He then turned the telescope to a familiar star-cluster in the
Sagittarius constellation, the bright hub of the Milky Way.
There it was. A faint fuzzy patch.
It was Alan Hale's comet.
Thomas Bopp has been interested in astronomy since he saw a meteor
shower as a 4-year-old. When he was 12, his parents bought him a small
telescope and Bopp was on his way. He took an astronomy course at
Youngstown State University in Ohio.
Bopp moved to Phoenix, Ariz., as a construction engineer in 1980 and
joined one of the many astronomy clubs in the clear Southwest. He was
on an observing trip with other club members when he swung his borrowed
telescope to the same area of sky that Alan Hale was looking at.
Bopp saw a fuzzy blur in the sky and asked a friend: ``Is this blurry
place supposed to be there?''
So Bopp joined Hale in discovering a comet. It was duly reported to
the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams in Massachusetts - the
clearing house for celestial discoveries.
Because Hale and Bopp reported the same comet at almost the same time
it was named after both of them. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS color photo
This is a red-filtered image of Comet Hale-Bopp, which is growing
brighter and is expected to come closest to Earth on March 22.