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: Unknown to Hale, that night Thomas Bopp was observing the same region of the sky with friends near Stanfield, Arizona. At around 11:00 pm, Bopp was observing M70 through his telescope and "noticed a fainter, fuzzy object coming into the field". Bopp and his friends determined that it was a comet, and after Bopp returned home he informed Central Bureau of his discovery. On July 23, the IAU issued Circular 6187 to announce the joint discovery of the new comet. Per Hale, calculations indicate that Hale–Bopp likely last appeared on the order of 4000 years ago, but any record of this previous encounter had not yet been positively identified from ancient records. It has also been determined that Hale–Bopp will not return to the inner Solar System until approximately 4385. Comet Hale–Bopp, originally labeled C/1995 O1, and sometimes called "the Great Comet of 1997", became one of the most-viewed comets in human history, and the brightest comet seen since Comet West in 1976, appearing "1000 times brighter than Comet Halley did at the same distance." When the comet was at the peak of its brightness, Hale says he was giving talks about the comet in big cities with light-polluted night skies, so he did not get a chance "to see it all that much when it was really bright." Regarding the press conference of the comet’s discovery, Hale praised the reporting done by “the very first reporter that broke the story of the comet’s discovery,” the Albuquerque Journal science reporter John Fleck: As an example of the media getting it wrong, Hale told this story: Heaven's Gate reaction Historically linked to the discovery and first