| THE Comet Hale-Bopp has left the Northern GREAT COMET Hemisphere skies, but it leaves behind a lode of data and memories. OF 1997 Above: Joshua Vaughan captured this view of Hale-Bopp and the Perseus Double Cluster (upper right) on April 6th above the ruins of the Wukoki Indians near Flagstaff, Arizona. Right: Johnny Horne snapped this March 31st scene as his 14-year-old son, Adam, eyed the comet from North Carolina's Grandfather Mountain. More than 3,900 Hale-Bopp images have now been archived by Ron Baalke (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) on his World Wide Web site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/. Hale-Bopp may be the most-photographed comet in history. C omets have always fascinated humankind, and Comet Hale-Bopp, C/1995 O1, is a prime example. As this fuzzy wraith with its long, curving tail hung high and bright over most of the world's evening landscapes in late March and early April, it captivated the public and media's attention like none before. By April 9th, 69 percent of Americans had seen the comet for themselves and another 12 percent said they planned to make a point of doing so, according to a survey of 1,000 adults by the polling firm Maricopa Research. That would increase Hale-Bopp's viewership to 81 percent of adults. "Not even the Super Bowl can claim 81 percent of America in its audience," said company president Scott W. Rasmussen. "In an era of increasingly fragmented audiences, Hale-Bopp has somehow become an experience shared by Americans of every description." Unfortunately, Hale-Bopp will also be remembered for a surprise outbreak of cultism and pseudoscience -- in particular the suicide of 39 Heaven's Gate UFO cultists in California, carefully timed around the comet's closest approach to Earth on March 22nd. This is another testament to humankind's enduring comet mania (see the May issue, page 46). Post-Perihelion Observations Hale-Bopp formed an impressive part of the evening sky at about magnitude �0.5 to �1.0 during the three weeks around its April 1st perihelion. On April 6th Paulo M. Raymundo and Cristiane ...
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