first comet found during the second half-month of July 1995. Hale's name precedes Bopp's because his was the first report to arrive. It is uncertain who was the first to discover it, as they both spotted it at around the same time. The following day Hale phoned Bopp to introduce himself with the words, "I think that we have something in common." When they met at a conference two months later, Bopp said to the press that he was glad that Hale "turned out to be a nice guy." After the discovery After the discovery, Bopp was in demand on television and radio, and was invited to speak at conferences. One such appearance was on the children's science television show Bill Nye The Science Guy. On March 21, 1997, Hale and Bopp were named ABC Person of the Week in the Friday night broadcast. Bopp has said that "I thought that it would be a comet that would be mentioned in the back of some obscure textbook somewhere, but it's certainly not turned out to be that way." As Hale–Bopp became more visible, Bopp left his job and became a full-time speaker and educator. He enjoyed presenting in schools, science centers and museums, enthusing children with astronomy, and met up with his co-discoverer Hale in Queensland while taking a group of school children to see the 2012 eclipse in Australia. At White Sands Missile Range in 1997 Bopp was invited to be an observer when an ultraviolet spectrograph was launched by Black Brant rocket to observe the comet and look for argon and neon. Previously unobserved isotopes were discovered in addition to a third sodium tail. Bopp was awarded an honorary doctor of Science degree from Youngstown State University in 1998. Bopp and his father also became the first two members of the Friends of Ward Beecher Planetarium at the university. In 1997, as comet Hale–Bopp reached its brightest point, Bopp's brother and sister-in-law were killed in a car accident after photographing the comet. "This has been the best week of my life. And the worst," Bopp told a National Geographic reporter. Bopp and his father Frank have had an asteroid named after them, (7086) Bopp, discovered October 5, 1991, by Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker. In 1997, the Shoemakers, both famous for co-discovering comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, were involved in a car crash. Gene died in the crash and his ashes