who met up to observe in the Arizona desert. Despite multiple attempts, prior to 1995, Bopp had never observed a comet. At this time Bopp was making use of a telescope belonging to close friend Jim Stevens, a 17.5-inch reflecting telescope. On the night of July 22, 1995, eight members of the club met at an undisclosed spot near Vekol Ranch, ninety miles south of Phoenix and as usual Stevens and Bopp were sharing time looking through Stevens's telescope. Stevens had set up his newest home-built telescope and decided to look for globular clusters. Stevens lined up Messier 70 (M70) in the constellation Sagittarius and called Bopp over to look. At around 11 p.m. Bopp looked into the telescope and said, "What's this other object?" Stevens replied, "You might have something there, Tom." Bopp later described what he saw as "a little fuzzy glow" which he initially believed to be a galaxy. On the same night, professional astronomer and experienced comet observer Alan Hale had spotted the same thing at his home in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, while he was killing time waiting for Comet d'Arrest to appear. Bopp, on the other hand, had never seen a comet before. Bopp and his friends checked star charts and watched the object for an hour to determine whether it was moving. Bopp and another member of the group, Bertie Sanden, made drawings of its position in relation to other nearby dim stars and, on discovering the movement, Bopp attempted to contact the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the organization that records all astronomical sightings and names them, to officially log his findings. Discovering his cell phone had no coverage in the desert he drove towards home, stopping at a public payphone before realizing he did not have the phone number. At home again, Bopp finally reported the sighting by telegram to the IAU. Bopp had taken the institute's name literally and sent a telegram via Western Union. Hale had already sent three emails with the comet's coordinates. Bopp later acknowledged the chance discovery, The following morning at 8:25am the office of Brian Marsden, director of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, called him back to confirm the sighting was indeed a comet. The comet was given the formal name Comet 1995 O1, and three days later its full title C/1995 O1 (Hale–Bopp), designating the