January 16, 20251 yr Author I have very fond memories of Hale Bopp, we had an extraordinary view of it one night and being road maintenance and the roads in good condition we took lunch on the "hill side." Roads in the foothills of the Chugach range above Anchorage, the aurora was out bright and vivid with stars to bright they appeared to twinkle different colors. There we were standing around in a small parking lot at -20f talking about the view of Anchorage below us and start above when we noticed a small blue fuzzy star. We were speculating on why it was fuzzy, maybe a small cloud but clouds don't last long at those temps when a couple of us said simultaneously, "It's Hale Bopp, the COMET!" I was so pumped by the night, stars, aurora and comet I wrote it up as a short story and sent it to the old Artmetal. list and went to bed. When I checked my email the next afternoon there were hundreds of emails about it. One of those emails was Deb, it'd been FWDed to her from a goat.list and her email handle was Snowgoose. Both struck me as interesting and she was one of the few "strangers" I replied to directly. We've been married for IIRC 27 years last July. So, yeah Hale Bopp holds a place in my heart. Frosty The Lucky.
January 16, 20251 yr My comet story involves Haliey's Comet. 1986 and I was on spring break from law school. Martha and I and some friends went down to west Texas to see the comment and do other stuff. We went to a "comet party" at Davis Peak Observtory which is run by the Univ. of Texas. The staffer was telling us where to look in the sky but there was an elderly woman standing near us who was having difficulty. Martha and I helped her to focus on the correct part of the sky to find it. It turned out that she had seen seen the comet as a child in 1910. It was cool to help someone to see it for a 2d time in their lives. A few days later we were camped at a campground in Big Bend National Park and Martha and I got up about 3 or 4 in the morning to see it hanging in the southern sky amongst about a billion stars. A memory that will remain fresh all my life. G.
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