Word: coma
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...Soviets were justifiably proud. Their spacecraft -- designed, built and equipped under their supervision by scientists from ten nations -- had become the first man-made object to record close-up views of a comet's coma and nucleus, and send the images and other data back to earth.* It also served as the advance guard for four other craft -- the Soviet Vega 2, the Japanese Suisei and Sakigake, and the European Space Agency's Giotto -- that were to sweep by Halley's in the following week...
...most dramatic display so far. As the comet neared its Feb. 9 perihelion, its closest approach to the sun (about 55 million miles), the searing solar rays caused increasing amounts of material to evaporate from its icy surface. Eventually the comet's enveloping gas cloud, or coma, grew to more than 12.5 million miles across, temporarily becoming the largest object in the solar system...
...fact, Halley's spectacular show did not go entirely unobserved. Last week scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center in California proudly displayed computercolored ultraviolet images of Halley's hydrogen coma as it appeared between Feb. 2 and 5, and described the changes in the comet during its most active period...
Pioneer will continue to observe Halley's, measuring water loss and looking for oxygen, carbon, sulfur and other elements in the coma's gases, until March 6, when the sun will begin blocking the Venusian view of the comet. On that day, however, the first of an international flotilla of spacecraft will take over Halley's vigil. The Soviet probe Vega 1 will fly through the coma, passing within 6,000 miles of the nucleus. It will be followed by another Soviet craft, two Japanese probes, and the European Space Agency's Giotto, which will make the most daring pass...
...Bulow was convicted in his first trial for attempting to murder his millionaire wife Sunny by giving her coma-inducing insulin injections...