Thierry Legault Thierry Legault Thierry Legault (born 1962, chinese name :特厄力‧立夠) is a French amateur astronomer, specializing in astrophotography. An engineer by trade, he started astrophotography in 1993 and resorted to CCD cameras to photograph the deep sky. He then joined the "Association des utilisateurs de détecteurs electroniques (l'AUDE)", which aims to develop astronomical observation based on electronic detectors. In 1994, along with Christian Buil, he participated in a mission at the Pic du Midi Observatory on the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter and launched himself into planetary photography. He is the first amateur to have shown on his photographs
Thomas Bopp 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, , discovered October 5, 1991, by Carolyn and Gene Shoemaker. In 1997 Gene Shoemaker and his wife, both famous for co-discovering comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, were involved in a fatal car crash while observing Hale-Bopp. Gene died in the crash and his ashes were