Alan Hale obit

Passing of Alan Hale: Skywatcher and Hale-Bopp Legacy

He was not on the list. 

I am saddened to report the passing of my dear friend, Alan Hale – an astronomer that made us all look up and ponder about a visitor from afar – the noted Hale Bopp comet. That object was one of the most widely observed space intruders of the 20th century.

When it passed perihelion on April 1, 1997, reaching about magnitude −1.8, its massive nucleus size made it visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months.

From Vickie Stone Moseley Hale in Cloudcroft, New Mexico: “Today the love my life, Father, Grandfather, Astronomer, Comet discoverer, passed away in his home. I am heart broken.”

I will always remember Alan Hale in an interview telling me, after first seeing the object late night, something like, “and then I took my life in my hands and woke up my wife,” inviting her to his telescope’s eye piece to marvel at what he observed.

I’ll miss you Alan, but now you are among the stars, planets, and other objects that you loved to keep an eye on.

He co-discovered Comet Hale–Bopp independently of its other co-discoverer, Thomas Bopp, an amateur astronomer.

Hale specialized in the study of Sun-like stars and the search for extra-solar planetary systems, and had side interests in the fields of comets and near-Earth asteroids. He was an astronomer most of his life and served as the president of the Earthrise Institute, which he founded, and which has as its mission the use of astronomy as a tool for breaking down international and intercultural barriers. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) named an asteroid in Hale's honor, 4151 Alanhale, in recognition of his numerous comet observations.

Alan Hale was born in 1958 in Tachikawa, Japan,[1] where his father was serving in the United States Air Force. 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."[5] He credited several factors for inspiring his interest in science and astronomy in the 1960s: the clear night skies in Alamogordo, library books on astronomy his father gave him in the first grade, the U.S. space program, and the original Star Trek television series. Hale also said that as a child he was interested in other sciences as well, and he "went through a dinosaur phase when I was in second grade. I knew them all. Drove my parent nuts."

Hale graduated from Alamogordo High School in 1976, and then served in the United States Navy from 1976 to 1983. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in physics. Following his Navy service he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) until 1986 as an engineering contractor for Allied Bendix Aerospace working on the NASA Deep Space Network project, as well as on several spacecraft projects. During the 1986 Voyager 2 fly-by of Uranus, he worked with the Radio Science Experiment, using the spacecraft carrier signal to deduce information about Uranus' atmosphere and rings.

After leaving JPL, Hale enrolled in the astronomy department of New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, where he earned a Master's Degree and a PhD in 1989 and 1992 respectively, both in astronomy. His doctoral dissertation was published in the January 1994 issue of The Astronomical Journal. After completing his studies at New Mexico State University, Hale worked at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo as its staff astronomer and outreach education coordinator.