In 1995, he and Thomas Bopp spotted, from different states, the same mysterious object in the sky. What turned out to be a comet was named after them: Hale-Bopp.
Alan Hale, who wheeled a telescope out of his New Mexico garage on July 23, 1995, and spotted a fuzzy object in the constellation Sagittarius, discovering what may be the most-viewed comet in human history — known as Hale-Bopp, after Dr. Hale and Tho... [1476 chars]