Comet Hale-Bopp 1997Hale Bopp

I was an astronomy nerd as a kid. I delighted more in the night sky than in baseball when I was shipped off to sleepover camp. I could rattle off the names of all the constellations, both summer and winter, when my friends were more into sports stats. They could talk engines; I could talk parabolic reflective mirrors (although I never successfully ground one that would actually work). And I was in love with the possibility of comets. Two of the much-touted ones—Kohoutek, in 1973, and Halley, in 1986—were, despite my prayers, duds. But in 1997, I finally got my comet wish, when Hale-Bopp lit up the western sky for months. Those were the days of slide film, and with my trusty Nikon F2, I took my share of fine photographs. When Comet ISON made its perilous trip around the sun last week, I had high hopes that when it emerged, we'd get an equally wonderful sighting and I'd be busy taking pictures, this time, of course, digital images. Alas, ISON's voyage, a million-plus-years in the making, ended in the comet's demise. It's now nothing more than a ghost in the cosmos, darkness in a dark sky.