The Hale Bopp Comet As I am sure all of you know, we have recently been able to see a new but not permanent additon to the night sky. This addition is known as Hale-Bopp, a comet that is about 122 million miles (about 1.3 times the distance of the sun to the earth) from the earth and is approximately 25 miles wide. Hale-Bopp was discovered on July 23,1995 by two scientists named Alan Hale in New Mexico and Thomas Bopp in Arizona. This is the first discovery for both of them, although Alan Hale is one of the top visual comet observers in the world, having seen about 200 comet apparitions. That is one of the reasons they put his name first. Alan Hale comments, "I love the