Alan Hale (born 1958) is an American professional astronomer who co-discovered Comet Hale–Bopp independently of its other co-discoverer, Thomas Bopp, an amateur astronomer. Four months later his father was transferred to Holloman Air Force Base outside Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Hale was raised in Alamogordo, where his father retired from the Air Force and worked in civil service. In 2013 Hale said, "I refuse to say that 'I grew up there' because anyone who know me knows that I really haven't grown up yet." He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in physics.
After completing his studies at the New Mexico State University, Hale worked at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo as its staff astronomer and outreach education coordinator.
Hale said, "There is an entire generation that has come of age having never really seen the dark sky", so part of what he wanted to accomplish with Earthrise was "to create an environment where students could spend some nights out under a dark sky and see what it really looks like." Earthrise's inaugural educational project was announced in a press release on March 1, 2007:
Hale remains active with the Earthrise Institute, performing science outreach. For example, his "In Our Skies" column appears in the Alamogordo Daily News, in which he discusses current astronomical issues.
In 2019, Hale announced he was authoring a weekly educational series about the "small bodies" of the Solar System. The series, titled Ice and Stone 2020, features three presentations about comets and asteroids – This Week in History, Comet of the week, and a Special Topic – being released each week throughout 2020. Ice and Stone 2020 is available for free online at the websites of both the Earthrise Institute and RocketSTEM.
Discovery of Comet Hale–Bopp
thumbnail|right|[[Comet Hale–Bopp]]
Hale first spotted the comet that would come to bear his name from his home in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, where the night sky is exceptionally dark. Since 1970 Hale had observed over 200 known comets, and on the night of July 22–23, 1995, after finishing his observations of periodic Comet Clark, and while waiting for periodic Comet d'Arrest to become visible above the horizon, he "decided to pass the time by observing some deep-sky objects in Sagittarius", and pointed his Meade DS-16 telescope towards globular cluster M70. He said that he "immediately noticed a fuzzy object in the field" which had not been present when he had observed that region of the sky two weeks earlier.
After consulting his astronomical sources, and determining that the comet was likely unknown, Hale says: